Rapidity
by Beautiful Thief
Summary: Trapped in a death game, tied by a promise. Sword Art Online AU; AoKise. "Yeah. You're not allowed to die here." "Because I haven't beaten you yet," Kise finished.
1. Chapter 1

Opening notes: This is a **Sword Art Online AU** fic. If you haven't read or watched Sword Art Online, and would like to or plan to, I advise against reading this fic, as it will likely contain a significant number of spoilers for the series.

* * *

"Satsuki, what's this game everyone's talking about lately?"

Daiki ignored his best friend's huff and eye roll. "Really, Dai-chan," was her response. "It's only kind of groundbreaking on a number of levels."

"I just want to know what it is, Satsuki."

It was a pretty normal day, all things considered. Daiki had been napping inside, as it was beginning to get uncomfortably cold outside.

"It's a Virtual Reality MMORPG," Satsuki told him. "It's a so called 'full dive' game, where essentially the player's entire consciousness is within the game, and you experience it yourself rather than through a remotely controlled avatar. It's received incredible reviews from the beta testers, and it marks an incredible future for both gaming and brain research. Why do you want to know, anyway? It's not like anything but basketball usually interests you."

Daiki shrugged. "I keep hearing people talk about it," he grumbled. "I dunno, I was just curious. It's supposed to be difficult. Basketball season's over and it's going to be too dangerous for street games soon with ice and snow. I was thinking about picking it up."

Satsuki looked thoughtful. "But all of the 10,000 preorders have already been snapped up, and hardcore gamers have been in line for days to get physical copies... Oh!"

Daiki cracked open an eye to look at Satsuki. "Oh, what?"

"Well... Ki-chan's agency was approached about using Ki-chan as a model for some official artwork. I think Ki-chan was offered a few copies in payment? If you're interested, you should ask him."

"I didn't think Kise was the type to play games," Daiki commented.

"Usually, that's true," Satsuki agreed, "but I think he might have been thinking along the same lines as you. And he's been aggravating his knee again with overtraining towards the end of this season. He's got doctor's orders not to exercise for a while."

Daiki frowned. "Idiot," he muttered. "He never learns."

They fell into silence, and Daiki started dozing again. He was jerked back awake when Satsuki hit his arm.

"Oi."

"Are you going to mail Ki-chan or not?" she asked.

"You do it."

"_I'm_ not the one who wants to play!"

"You regularly mail him though. You know about his orders from his _doctor_."

"You're terrible, Dai-chan. It's my job to know these things. And Ki-chan would love to hear from you more often," Satsuki said. But Daiki could hear her texting, so he leaned back over onto his desk and closed his eyes.

He heard Satsuki's phone buzz – Kise always was so excitable when someone contacted him.

"He says he still has them, but said to remind you that you still need the NerveGear if you want to use it. He also says that Kagamin and Tetsu-kun have also expressed interest in it? Maybe all four of you could play together?"

Daiki sighed. "Tell him if he doesn't have the gear either, we can go get it together over the weekend," he mumbled through his arms. "I don't care if Tetsu or Bakagami tag along. They can play with Kise, and then I don't have to."

Satsuki was probably giving him a dirty look, but Daiki really didn't care. He just listened to her tapping away at her phone, and waited for it to buzz again with a response.

Her phone buzzed. And then he felt his buzz in his pocket.

"Ugh. Satsuki, why did he mail me?"

Her voice sounded amused as she answered. "Because _you're_ the one making plans with Ki-chan, not me."

Daiki fished his phone out of his pocket, and then reluctantly opened his eyes to look at the screen.

'_Aominecchi! I'm surprised you're interested in playing this game! But it'll be fun, don't you think? Anyway, I do need to go get the hardware if we are, so we'll meet at the shopping district this weekend? Near the train station around midday? Does that work for you, Aominecchi? If not, just tell me when suits you!'_

"Ugh."

'_sounds fine. see you then'_ Daiki mailed back. It was probably a little earlier than he'd like, but Kise was an overenthusiastic mailer, and if he left him the opportunity, his phone would be buzzing non-stop.

Still, he felt his phone buzz again.

'_Waah! I'm so excited to play with Aominecchi! I'd ask to play one-on-one after, but my doctor says I'm supposed to avoid exercise for a while..._'

Daiki didn't bother to respond to this.

* * *

"Aominecchi!"

Daiki would fiercely argue with all his breath against anyone who said that the sound of Kise calling him made him smile just a little bit. He looked up from his phone, where he'd been playing some mindless game or other, and waved.

Kise cheerfully latched onto his arm. "Hi, Aominecchi! It's been ages. How are you?"

Daiki shrugged him off. "I'm fine. Bored. You?"

Kise sighed, kicking at the street. "The same," he admitted. "I've been working a bit more, but I used to train so much... ah, but that's the reason I've been sidelined. Still, it's been hard finding things to do in all the spare time I have now."

Silence fell across the pair as they walked towards the shops.

"You know," Kise said, "I was really surprised to hear from Momocchi that you were interested in playing this game. I was just going to sell the copies that were given to me."

Daiki shrugged. "Well, it's supposed to be difficult, from what I've heard. If I'm going to play a game, I might as well pick a challenging one."

Kise smiled. "That sounds about right," he said, laughing. "Oh, here we are."

As he watched Kise wander towards the desk to talk to the assistant, Daiki paid particular notice to Kise's legs. It was barely there, but he noticed that Kise was walking with a slight favouring of his bad leg, and frowned before walking over to join Kise.

"Ah, Aominecchi! You're so slow," Kise complained. "I've gotten the assistant to go and get two, but she says that she'll need to make two trips because they aren't really light. She wanted me to help but..."

Daiki snorted. "She probably wanted to kiss you in the back room," he said to Kise, who flushed.

"Probably," Kise muttered, and Daiki had the feeling he hadn't intended for him to hear. "It wouldn't be the first time."

Daiki absently wondered if Kise often got accosted in stores by fans who worked there.

So, of course, he asked. "Do you often get jumped by fans who work in stores?"

"Well, sometimes," Kise finally admitted after a long moment. He seemed distinctly uncomfortable, but Daiki just grinned. "After the time a girl got herself into my changing room I got a lot more careful... I can't go shopping on my own anymore. I don't mind though!" He was clearly making an effort to sound cheerful. "I like having company, though sometimes it's hard to find someone willing to come with me." His face fell a little, and Daiki felt an uncomfortable stab of guilt. "It's bad for my image if I would get caught fooling around with girls in stores," Kise added. "And somehow these things always get out... I think sometimes the girls like to brag and it just..."

Daiki wasn't sure how he felt about this conversation. He'd gone after the topic because it looked like it made Kise uncomfortable, and he was terrible enough to admit that he enjoyed making people uncomfortable. But now it was just getting awkward, because he was becoming terribly aware that Kise likely had far more experience with girls than he did, and he really didn't want to admit to that.

Kise had always been popular, but relationships were light hearted and fleeting in junior high, and although Kise had had girlfriends, it was painfully obvious with Kise's increasing devotion to the basketball club that he hadn't really done any more than maybe kiss a couple of the girls who he dated. Daiki himself hadn't had any girlfriends until toward the end of junior high when basketball became disappointing, and though he might have liked to do more than some making out here and there, girls usually became frustrated by his apathy or jealous of the close relationship he had with Satsuki.

Daiki tore himself from his thoughts to pet Kise's head. "How troublesome it must be to have girls all over you."

Kise had the grace to look embarrassed. "Shut up, Aominecchi. You're just jealous because your terrible personality drives away all the girls who might be interested in you."

"I do not have a terrible personality," Daiki argued. Kise just looked at him.

Before their discussion could continue, the girl returned with another associate carrying the gear.

"Oh, you're wonderful," Kise told the other associate. The boy seemed torn between being displeased – Daiki guessed he was interested in the girl – and being charmed. It was hard not to fall just a little for Kise, if you didn't know him.

Daiki could remember the first time he saw Kise. A ball had gone flying out of the gymnasium, and he'd chased off after it. He remembered watching it strike a head of blond hair, and seeing Kise's face in person for the first time, after hearing about the elusive model student who excelled in every sport he tried in the school whispers for months. But that wasn't Daiki's Kise Moment, as Teikou's regulars had ended up calling it. Daiki's Kise Moment had been when he'd followed after him, and when he'd looked over at the door after making his way past three defenders, and seeing the way Kise had _looked_ at him in that moment.

Of course, not everyone had a Kise Moment. Daiki had never told the first string he'd had one, for sure, though he was pretty sure Tetsu had figured it out, if only because he was pretty sure Tetsu had had one as well. Satsuki cheerfully admitted to having had one before Kise had joined the basketball club.

Daiki made sure to pay first and he took charge of both of the bags.

"There's no need for you to carry them both, Aominecchi," Kise protested as they walked out.

Daiki just looked at him. "You're already favouring your bad leg," he said to the blond bluntly. "Satsuki will get mad at me. Don't ask how she'll know, she just always does. Besides, this could easily have been done separately. Model-san must have known I would carry his bags for him if he got me to come along."

Daiki loved teasing Kise – he had some of the best reactions. This remark caused Kise to turn pink.

"You're awful."

"If I was awful, I'd make _you_ carry both of the bags. You can buy me lunch if you feel so badly about it."

He grinned at Kise, and the other boy let out a long-suffering sigh.

"I don't know how Momocchi puts up with you all the time," Kise replied. Daiki looked at him curiously. Was he _teasing_ him?

Daiki nudged Kise in the ribs gently with his elbow, "I happen to have a few redeeming features," he said. He was still smiling.

Daiki didn't hear it when Kise mumbled, "Yeah," under his breath.

* * *

"Did you have a nice time out with Ki-chan yesterday?"

Satsuki had wandered around to his place, under the pretence of getting him to study. Since they both knew that the chances of her actually getting him to study were very slim, this was clearly not the reason she'd decided to make her way over to his house.

Daiki shrugged. "I didn't hate it," he offered. "It was kind of weird, though. It's been a long time since we did something which wasn't basketball together."

Satsuki patted his head. "Both of you are hopeless," she commented, but there was a gentle, caring tone to her voice.

"So, why'd you come over, Satsuki?"

She sighed, as if she wished he didn't know her so well. "How's Ki-chan's leg?"

He frowned, looking at the roof. "He favours it a little when he's walking around," he said, his voice quiet. "He's going to really injure himself one of these days."

A frown tugged at Satsuki's mouth, although Daiki knew that this was exactly what she was expecting. "Ki-chan's Perfect Copy is incredible, but it's so hard on his body," she murmured. She was thinking to herself. She looked sharply at Daiki's own knees. "But hardest on his body is imitating your style, I think. That's where the initial over-work started. Midorin's shots require power and stamina, more than any big demand on the joints, and Akashi-kun's eyes... well, I don't even know _how_ he does that. It's easy for someone of Ki-chan's size to move with the speed that Muk-kun does, although the way he imitates his reach and power... but in the end, it's the way he moves like you, Dai-chan. What kind of training can we suggest for his coaches so that he won't destroy himself?"

As Satsuki began thinking to herself, Daiki mulled over what she'd said.

"Wait, Satsuki." Daiki was stuck on her last point. "Do you think he could _permanently_ injure himself?"

The look Satsuki gave him was equal parts disappointed and concerned. "Of course he could, Dai-chan."

Daiki wasn't sure he liked the cold feeling that trickled through him at the idea that Kise would never be able to play against him again. Kise had become one of very few people he could really _play_ against, and people like that were rare. The thought of losing one of them was almost horrifying.

He frowned and stared at the ceiling. What had they done, so that Daiki's knees had the ability to take the strain of his play style? Just like everything else about himself and basketball, Daiki just wasn't _sure_. Everything about it was instinctive. Usually, Daiki didn't care, or even enjoyed that the way he played had everything to do with sensing and feeling and doing, more than thinking. At this moment, though, he was just frustrated.

"I carried his things for him," Daiki admitted to Satsuki quietly. She smiled at him.

"Sometimes, Dai-chan," she said, "it's nice to see you can be sweet even though you're a jerk."

"Oi. Hey, help me set up the gear, will you? I can't make a heads or tails of how to set it up."

Satsuki sighed, but she smiled as she pulled the things out from the bag Daiki had left in the corner of the room. "You're really hopeless, Dai-chan," she told him. She looked at the instruction book. "You could do this yourself if you would just read the instructions properly... oh what am I saying, it's _you_."

"Oi."

* * *

"Kagamicchi and Kurokocchi are going to dinner with the rest of Seirin to see off their seniors before they join us."

Kise was on speaker, and the phone sat safely on his bedside table. Daiki was lazing about on the bed, chucking a basketball at the wall. He wasn't, strictly speaking, supposed to, but his parents had given up on stopping him years ago, and as such, the wall was pitted with dirt marks from where his basketballs had hit it.

"We'll meet them when they come on later, then. Have you decided on a name? They need to know at least one of our names to find us."

Against his better judgement, somehow, Kise had gotten him to agree to play with him, Tetsu and Kagami.

"Well, sort of," Kise replied. "I'm not terribly imaginative, and you know they only let you use the English alphabet for names? Ugh, I'm so bad at English, Aominecchi."

"You're bad at school full stop, Kise."

"I'm better than you... though... that's not really saying much, is it, Aominecchi?"

Daiki grunted and threw the basketball again, sour about the jibe. Kise wasn't stupid – Kise was just incredibly busy, and with basketball and his modelling, he often ended up without the time to do homework and sometimes missing class. He'd heard Satsuki despairing over Kise one afternoon at practice, demanding to know how his grades had dropped from average to failing marks so quickly. Daiki did not have Kise's excuse of business – he was just lazy, slept through class and never tried to put in any effort to understanding his classwork. The fact that he maintained the bare minimum of a pass to continue playing basketball was Satsuki's handiwork more than his own.

"Just put your name into a translator and play with the letters or something. I don't know."

"What are you going to do, Aominecchi?"

"Probably what I just told you to do."

He hears Kise sigh on the other end of the line and chucks the ball at the wall again.

"I miss basketball," Kise whines, correctly identifying the cause of the thump. "I'm so sick of being banned from our gym. Any time the seniors see me anywhere _near_ the gym they start yelling at me."

Daiki laughed, which was probably a little bit mean. He was pretty sure Kise would be pouting or something on the other end of the phone.

"Well, you need to be more careful then," he answered. "Pushing your body like that; you're so stupid sometimes, Kise."

The line was quiet for a moment. "But how am I supposed to catch up if I don't?" It was a hesitant question, like he was afraid of something, though Daiki wasn't sure what. He rolled his eyes.

"Idiot. You'll catch up faster if you stop sidelining yourself because you're injured."

Kise is quiet again. It's starting to get annoying. Daiki looks over to check the time.

"So, figured out a name yet? It'll be time to start soon, won't it?"

He's avoiding the subject, but Daiki won't bring himself to pursue it. He made a non-committal noise and chucked the basketball at the wall again. "I don't know. I'll just use my name. I can't be bothered with figuring out a name."

"You're so lazy, Aominecchi," Kise sighs on the other end. "But at least I guess I'll be able to find you easily enough... have you done the calibrations yet?"

"Yeah, yeah, calm down Kise. I don't want to have to waste too much time with setup either, you know."

"Anyway, Aominecchi, if you're just going to use your name, then I'll text Kurokocchi so he and Kagamicchi know, and I'll talk to you when I find you there, okay?"

"Mmm."

"Alright! See you soon, Aominecchi!"

The dial tone sounded. Daiki reached over to pick up the phone to end the call from his side too, and then pushed himself up to pick up the NerveGear helmet. He turned it over in his hands before sliding it over his head and sprawling back on his bed.

"Link start."

The experience of colour flying past was still odd; but everything seemed in order, with senses correctly connected. Setting the language to Japanese, Daiki grumbled to himself when he had to set up the account. _Effort_.

Still, it was done quickly, and then he was in character creation. Why did this have to take so long, anyway? Still, this was more interesting than administrative things like _account creation_.

Daiki didn't have many, if any, issues with his body or appearance in person, and he never claimed to be enormously creative. He imagined that Tetsu would laugh at him later, but he essentially created himself again. _Tetsu will make himself taller_, he thought to himself as he looked at the avatar he'd pulled together. Tall, though perhaps not his monstrously tall height as usual – muscular but not beefy; he always had preferred speed to power, though it was nice to have both. He picked to have a darker skin tone, but elected to have black hair instead of his eye-catching dark blue. Kise might be able to get by at home – blond was a _normal_ hair colour – but Daiki had always been annoyed by his ridiculous hair and the weird looks he got because of it, and he could always do in-game dye later when it was _normal_ for people to have weird hair colours if he really wanted it back.

Finally all done, Daiki found himself surrounded by blue light, and then looking at an enormous square.

There were _hundreds_ of people here. Most of them moved around tentatively at first, as if still getting used to the way their bodies moved. Daiki found that while his centre of gravity was a little lower, this body moved much the same way as his usual one, and strolled off to the side.

He wasn't sure what Kise was going to look like, although if he had to guess, he'd say he'd be much the same. Kise might be annoying, but his most unfortunate quality was his vanity, which was sadly encouraged by the fact that he was actually quite good looking.

"Aominecchi, I might have known you'd look just like yourself," he heard his friend say to his side.

He'd been correct – Kise looked, by and large, mostly the same as usual. He was a similar height, though like Daiki, seemed to have chosen to be slightly shorter than his usual height. His hair was just as bright a shade of golden blond as usual, although his hair was long, but when he looked at Kise's face, he noticed that the face didn't look overly similar to his normal appearance.

It was _weird_ to hear his friend's voice come out of that unfamiliar face.

"I already told you I'm not very creative," Daiki answered. "Are you right to go?"

"Yep!" Kise answered, grinning. "Where should we go, Aominecchi?"

"Away from all these people."

"You should be more friendly, Aominecchi," Kise whined as they moved away from the square. They seemed to be on a street full of markets – Aomine pulled up the menu as they walked. The amount of money – Col – they started with was nowhere near enough to buy anything in here.

"I don't need to be friendly," he answered. "I'll have you and Tetsu and Kagami to play with, why would I need anyone else?"

That sounded unfortunately more sentimental than he'd intended, and he scowled. Kise's (frustratingly unfamiliar) face glowed, and Daiki noticed as Kise looked away that he was smiling.

"Ah! That looks like the exit to the town," Kise said, grabbing Daiki's wrist. "Come on, let's figure out how fighting works so we can teach Kurokocchi and Kagamicchi quickly when they get on."

Daiki nodded. That was what they were here to do – the _point_ of the whole game.

They walked out onto the plains from the road, and Daiki pulled the beginner's sword out from where it was sheathed at his hip. He watched Kise do the same as they approached a pig-animal.

"Let me have a look at the guidebook," Kise requested, pulling the item out.  
"Fuck that," Daiki answered, feeling the excitement thrumming through his body. "I don't need a book to tell me what to do."

He launched himself at the thing and swung the sword. He missed, and the pig came back around and butted into him.

"Oi!"

He heard Kise attempt to smother a laugh behind him and scowled. He'd put the book away.

"How about Aominecchi lets me show him what I just learned," he teased, and then he took a battle position. The sword in his hand hummed and glowed, and he charged.

The sword connected, and Daiki watched as the health bar of the thing dropped, before emptying out and the pig exploded in a shower of light.

Kise grinned and turned to look at him. Daiki scowled.

"I promise I won't be _too_ mean if you want to ask me how I did it, Aominecchi."

"You're so annoying, Kise."

Kise pouted. "I won't tell you if you're mean to me!"

Daiki sighed. Surely it couldn't hurt his pride _too_ much... and he _did_ really want to make something explode like Kise had just done.

"You won't tell Tetsu or Kagami, right?" he asked slowly.

Kise's smile was excited as he answered. "Of course not!"

They walked over to where another pig monster had spawned. "It's called a boar," Kise told him. "The beta tester guide book says they're equivalent to slimes in other games. I don't really know what that means, but I guess it just means they're weak? They're recommended for new people to learn the battle system on because they'll lose interest in fights quickly so if you get low on health and want to escape rather than incur the death timer you can get away from them."

Daiki nodded. "So how did you do it?"

"Get your sword ready," Kise instructed him. "And then you have to like... okay, the book says you need to add a pause in or something, to engage the sword skill system. The sword will glow and hum when it's engaged, and then the system will make sure that your sword connects. Ah, you'll be able to feel it when it's working. Or at least, I did..."

Daiki nodded, and prepared his sword. He felt it, like Kise had said, a little bit like a surge, and moved to strike. This time, he connected.

"Ah."

Kise grinned and bounced. "This is _fun_. I can't wait until Kagamicchi and Kurokocchi get here! I told them to add you as a friend when they get in, that you'd be under Aomine because you're not very creative."

Daiki rolled his eyes. "What did you call yourself, again?" he questioned.

"Kisery! You should accept my friend request, Aominecchi."

Daiki opened up the menu panel again. "Yeah, yeah. I've accepted, are you happy now?"

"For now." Kise grabbed at his wrist again and tugged. "Come on, Aominecchi, standing around isn't fun! We should totally try to get a level on Kurokocchi and Kagamicchi."

Daiki grinned then, and fell into step with Kise. "Yeah. Hey, does that book tell you where to go?"

* * *

"Please, _please_ pick up," Satsuki muttered desperately into her phone. "Please, let you be the basketball idiots I know you are, tell me you got diverted at a street court, please, _please_, Tetsu-kun..."

She wanted to wring her hands as she paced back and forth in front of Kagamin's apartment building. He didn't _appear_ to be home, but that wasn't saying anything much.

Finally, it connected. "_Momoi-san?_"

"Don't use the NerveGear, don't log into Sword Art Online," she begged. "Tetsu-kun, they're _trapped_, it's a _trap_."

She heard a sharp intake of breath on the line that wasn't related to exertion. "_Momoi-san, what's happened?_"

She trembled as she sank down onto the step. "Tell me Kagamin is with you."

"_Kagami-kun is with me,_" he reassured her.

Despair and relief warred within her. "Thank heavens," she mumbled. "I'm so glad I caught you in time." She felt her throat close up as she thought back to Dai-chan's bedroom and her desperate call to the Kise household as she gripped tight to Dai-chan's large, warm, slack hand.

"_Momoi-san, what's going on?_"

She took a deep, shaky breath. "It's a trap, Tetsu-kun. Ten thousand people have been trapped inside the server. If you remove the NerveGear, it fries their _brain_. And if they die in the game... then they die here too."

"_Aomine-kun and Kise-kun_..." Tetsu-kun trailed off, probably hoping she would give him the answer _they're fine, they didn't log on, they're not trapped in a death game_, and she choked, and felt her tears begin to fall.

"I... Dai-chan is... Tetsu-kun..."

"_Where are you?_"

"I'm at Kagamin's apartment," she managed to get out. "I had to... I had to..."

_I had to be here to stop you_.

"_We're on our way, Momoi-san. Would you like me to stay on the phone?_"

Satsuki heaved a shuddering breath. "I need to call Akashi-kun," she mumbled.

"_It can wait,_" Tetsu-kun told her. "_Let us be with you._"

She didn't know how to tell him she needed to be doing something. That having a goal and a plan made her feel less hopeless, gave her something to focus on that wasn't the way Dai-chan laid on his bed, unmoving, his head cradled inside the machine that threatened his life. The machine she'd hooked up for him.

_If I hadn't done it, would he have been ready to log in? Would I have had the chance to stop him, if he'd been delayed trying to set it up?_

She could hear Tetsu-kun's laboured breath and the thuds of two pairs of running feet over the connection. He wasn't speaking – he probably _couldn't_ speak when he was running so fast.

She saw them turn the corner, and she lowered her phone from her ear.

"Momoi-san." Tetsu-kun had that look about him that was familiar from their days at Teikou – like he wasn't sure if he was going to throw up or pass out from the exertion.

She felt no desire to throw herself into his arms, although she was sure it would be as comforting as it ever was. She had often sought the comfort of Tetsu-kun when Dai-chan was being horrible, but usually, when she was distressed, she would turn to Dai-chan. Even when he didn't care, he would listen, and when she was particularly unhappy sometimes he'd give her one of his rare hugs, the ones that sheltered her from everything. Dai-chan had a very protective streak through his core when it came to those he cared about the most, and it could be felt in the way that he'd give her that brief respite from her battles, giving her the power to soldier on beside him.

It wasn't that they were in love with each other, but their friendship was soul-deep and powerful, and Satsuki had _known_ that they'd spend their lives beside one another, their children growing up with each other the same way that they had grown together.

Except maybe now they _wouldn't_, and it was perhaps the most shattering realisation of Satsuki's life.

"Tetsu-kun," she whispered. "What am I going to _do_?"

She'd never realised she was so dependent on Dai-chan's existence in her life, even when he was at his most impossible.

She felt herself pulled into a hug. It didn't make her feel any better.

"First we'll call Akashi-kun," Tetsu-kun said. She could hear Kagamin digging through his bag for his keys. There was no basketball-shaped object in his bag; the two idiots had left the one they were using behind at the court. Somehow, this made her feeling of despair intensify.

"Come in," Kagamin said, and Satsuki felt herself being guided inside, her phone continuing to beep the signal that the connection had been severed.

* * *

Closing notes: I haven't worked ahead on this, so I'm not sure when the next chapter will be done. I have started working on it, though.

I hope you enjoyed that chapter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter notes:** Some dialogue is *ahem* borrowed from the first episode of Sword Art Online, and as such is not mine. Also, I didn't edit this extensively like I usually do because I just wanted to get to the next part of this goddamn fic.

* * *

"Shouldn't Kagami and Tetsu have contacted us by now?"

It was late afternoon – the beginnings of the sunset caused the sky to take on an orange hue. Daiki was glaring at the menu, waiting for the contact that hadn't come.

"They're probably just held up, or they found a court to play on while heading home, Aominecchi," Kise replied, smiling. "They'll come, I'm sure."

They'd sat down just a bit outside the Town of Beginnings. It was just past the time when Tetsu and Kagami had been scheduled to come and join them, but they were nowhere to be found.

And then bells were ringing, deafeningly loud from the town, and for the second time that day, Daiki found himself surrounded in blue light. When it receded again, he found himself standing next to Kise in the large, circular square in which he'd begun this little endeavour, and they weren't the only ones there. It seemed as if the entire population of the game was there, standing around the enormous clock, and no one knew what was going on until—

"Up there!" someone said, and everyone looked up. A red shape was blinking, and then it expanded, and they alternately said 'WARNING' and 'System Announcement'.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Daiki muttered to Kise, who nodded slowly.

The square and all the players were bathed in red light as the squares filled out the sky. And then, what looked like a thick red soupy liquid dripped from between the tiles and congealed into an enormous, robed person. Their face was hidden in the hood, which only served to make Daiki feel even more uneasy.

Whispers began around them, before the enormous figure finally began to speak.

"Attention, players," the hooded figure began as it extended its arms. "Welcome to my world. My name is Kayaba Akihiko. As of this moment, I am the sole person who can control this world."

"That... doesn't sound good," Kise whispered. There was a nervous look on his still frustratingly unfamiliar face. Daiki couldn't help but agree, and nodded. Around them, people were whispering again.

"I'm sure you've already noticed that the logout button is missing from the main menu," the spectre continued. Daiki felt shock punch through him, and looked at Kise again, who'd brought up his menu, and nodded at Daiki in confirmation, his face pale.

"But this is not a defect in the game. I repeat; this is not a defect in the game. It is a feature of Sword Art Online."

"This isn't real," Daiki heard Kise joining the whispers the rustled through the crowd. "It's not possible..."

"You cannot log out of SAO yourselves," Kayaba continued. "And no one on the outside can shut down or remove the NerveGear. Should this be attempted, the transmitter inside the NerveGear will emit a powerful microwave, destroying your brain and thus ending your life."

This time, Daiki and Kise traded worried looks.

"I'm sure Satsuki will be all over this," Daiki tried to reassure Kise, but his tone came out sounding nervous. He knew she wouldn't let anyone accidentally kill them, but it was still kind of terrifying to know that his and Kise's continued existence relied on her making sure that no one tried to take off the things on their heads...

A pair of players tried to leave the square as protests about the accuracy of this claim echoed around the crowd. They were stopped by an invisible barrier. Kise was beginning to take on a stricken look.

"Unfortunately," the looming figure continued, "several players' friends and families have ignored this warning, and have attempted to remove the NerveGear. As a result, two hundred and thirteen players are gone forever, from both Aincrad and the real world."

Kise was shaking. Daiki just felt numb.

"As you can see," Kayaba continued, as internet pages popped up around his figure, "news organisations across the world are reporting all of this, including the deaths. Thus, you can assume that the danger of a NerveGear being removed is now minimal. I hope you will relax and attempt to clear the game. But I want you to remember this clearly."

This was obviously a last and worst kind of announcement. Daiki braced himself.

"There is no longer any method to revive someone within the game. If your HP drops to zero, your avatar will be forever lost. And simultaneously, the NerveGear will destroy your brain."

Daiki had braced himself, but he still felt his stomach bottom out with the information. Kise was still shaking – Daiki reached out a tentative hand and gripped his wrist in the same way Kise had grabbed his arm in excitement earlier. Kise's skin was warm beneath the parts of his fingers not covered by gloves. The contact seemed to calm Kise slightly, for which Daiki was thankful. They'd both need their wits about them if they wanted to survive. And they _would_. Daiki had absolutely no intention of dying because of this twisted psychopath.

"There is only one means of escape. To complete the game. You are presently on the lowest floor of Aincrad, Floor 1. If you make your way through the dungeon and defeat the Floor Boss, you may advance to the next level. Defeat the final boss on Floor 100, and you will clear the game."

Outrage sounded from the players around them. Someone shouted that the beta testers had never made it even nearly as far as Floor 100. Daiki steeled himself; and Kise seemed to be rallying beside him, because he'd stopped shaking.

"Finally, I've added a present from me to your item storage. Please see for yourselves."

Around them, everyone opened up their menus to check out the item. Daiki followed suit, taking his hand from Kise's wrist.

"A mirror?" he heard someone comment. He looked over at Kise, who had already taken it out. Daiki took it out too.

The players around them were then engulfed with light – and Kise was too, and then Daiki – and the entire square flashed bright and when it receded, Daiki was looking at the mirror again and _that was his actual face_.

He looked at Kise; and that was the familiar face of his friend, and it relieved him almost as much as it alarmed him to see it.

"Aominecchi," Kise whispered, staring at his face. "Aominecchi, that's my face."

"Yeah," Daiki answered. He felt so useless.

"People are going to recognise me," Kise added.

"Shit." That was going to suck. Daiki hadn't thought about the fact that no one had approached them while they were playing, to talk to the idol Kise-kun, but now he remembered, _oh yeah, Kise's kind of famous _and_ all these people are going to recognise him from the advertisements_.

"You better get your best sparkle on," Daiki told him, "and hope that no one thinks you were in on this shit."

Kise closed his eyes and repeated Daiki's curse.

They were interrupted from their realisations when Kayaba began to speak again.

"Right now, you're probably wondering, 'Why?'. Why would Kayaba Akihiko, developer of Sword Art Online and the NerveGear, do all this? My goal has already been achieved. I created Sword Art Online for one reason. To create this world and intervene in it. And now, it is complete. This ends the tutorial for the official Sword Art Online launch. Good luck, players."

As quickly as it had come together, the spectre fell apart, slipping back into the cracks between the 'WARNING' and 'System Announcement' tiles, until there was nothing left of the enormous red robed figure that had dominated the square just moments ago.

Many of the players around them seemed to have gone into shock; Daiki himself found he was frozen in place, until the high pitched scream of a little girl echoed out from the masses – and then the people surged, yelling to be freed.

Daiki felt Kise grab his wrist again, and let himself be pulled. They weaved their way out from the shouting crowd.

"Aominecchi, we can't stay here," Kise said breathlessly when they'd cleared the square. "Kurokocchi and Kagamicchi probably aren't here. We need to go out. Ten thousand people are here. I don't play a lot of games, but I don't imagine that we can all safely level up and move along the game from here."

In response, Daiki shook his head. "I don't play a lot of games either," he said, "but yeah, you're right. There's not enough monster spawns for all ten thousand players around here."

"We've been working all afternoon. Together, we should be able to move along to safety. What do you think?"

"We're not going to die," Daiki said. It prompted a smile from Kise that was thin and determined. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen his sunny friend make a face quite so grim.

"We're going to play basketball, right, Aominecchi?"

Daiki grinned; it felt as grim as Kise's smile had been. "Yeah. You're not allowed to die here."

"Because I haven't beaten you yet," Kise finished.

He turned on his heel, and began walking to the town exit. Daiki heard Kise's feet patter as he caught up, and let himself smile – that Kise would chase him and reach his side even here was comforting.

* * *

They didn't encounter much trouble from other players as they travelled through the first floor until everyone got stuck trying to find the boss room for the first floor. It was only then, when the town closest to the dungeon started to fill up with players that their problems started to arise.

To be fair, Kise did his best to stay hidden. Daiki gave him that much – whenever they were outside and near people, Kise donned a hooded cloak and kept his face hidden. They kept their heads down and worked hard to level up, but not draw attention to themselves. If a particular quest or spawn spot started to become too busy, they'd move somewhere else, in case of the possibility that Kise's hood would come off his face.

Hanging out with Kise had always carried the risk of the famous boy being noticed, and at home, Kise had taken it all in stride with a cheerful smile. This was just another reminder of where they were, and how _vulnerable_ they were. Daiki knew that Kise, for all that they had promised they would make it out alive, was scared. His position as a public figure, especially within the game, since he was well known by players for his work on the advertisements, made him a target for potential anger and retribution, even though Daiki had reasonably pointed out to Kise one afternoon that Kise wouldn't be _stuck_ here if he'd known about the trap.

Kise smiled as he'd responded, but hadn't looked at Daiki when he spoke. "People who are angry and scared aren't that reasonable, Aominecchi."

Fuck, Daiki hated people.

It finally happened one afternoon. A group of players had called a meeting about finding and clearing the first floor boss room. Daiki and Kise had decided to use the opportunity to farm some of the areas that the higher level players had taken to clearing; it was empty, so they'd known most of them were intent on that boss room. Kise's hood had come down during the fight as they'd switched back and forth, and neither one of them had noticed that some players were coming up behind them until one of them spoke.

"Aren't you that guy from the advertisements?"

Kise's face had paled faster than Daiki had ever seen as they whirled to face the players. There was a dark look in a few of their faces. Daiki looked them and their equipment over. He was decent, but he wouldn't be able to take out all these guys if it came to a fight. Even factoring in Kise to the battle didn't give the pair of them good odds.

"Kise Ryouta, right?" added another one.

Daiki took a small step towards the group. "What's it to you?" he growled.

The first one – he must have been their leader – looked Daiki over. "You should get away from him," the boy advised him. The condescending manner almost made Daiki see red. He started, but Kise had an iron grip on his arm.

"Don't do something stupid Aominecchi," Kise murmured. Louder, he had added, "Yes, that's me."

"I wish I could kill you," said one of them. Daiki moved to place himself between Kise and the group, but Kise's grip was strong and wouldn't let him.

"I had nothing to do with this," Kise said. Daiki knew he was making a valiant attempt at sounding casual, but his grip was far too hard to be anything but nerves or fear. "I wouldn't be here if I'd known we'd all be trapped here."

"Two thousand people have died."

Daiki gritted his teeth. "If you're just going to be stupid, leave us alone," he snarled.

"Are you sucking up to him so he can get you out?" the leader asked. "Hiding yourself away, that's the mark of a guilty man."

Daiki freed himself from Kise's grip and threw a punch.

"Aominecchi!" Kise's stricken cry couldn't pull Daiki from his rage.

"Fuck you, fuck all of you, I'm not friends with him for any kind of _superficial_ reason like that you ugly bastard, not that a worthless piece of shit like you could _ever_ understand—"

"AOMINE!"

Kise wrestled him out from the group that had descended upon him. No one had drawn swords or engaged any skills – no one had lost any health. Daiki could feel his cheeks burning, but remained unrepentant about his actions.

"I won't let them treat you like this Kise," he told him, "I _won't_, you're trapped here in this death game same as me, same as them, and I'm not going to let some mob get its hands on you and kill you before we get to play basketball again."

Kise sighed. "I'm very sorry my friend hit you," he said to the group. "Please excuse us."

He strode past them – not one of them moved to follow. Daiki snorted, and then went to follow Kise.

"You can't solve this kind of problem with violence, Aominecchi," Kise said. He didn't look back as he said it.

"You can't solve it by hiding, either," Daiki argued, "but that's what you've been doing."

"Timing is important," Kise snapped. "I've been trying to wait for a better time."

"It's not going to _get_ better. People are going to be angry and scared until the day we clear this game, which, by the looks of it, will take a very long time."

Kise sighed. "Aominecchi, of the two of us, _who_, exactly, has been managing a career that involves being in the public eye for more than four years now? Because I was pretty sure it was _me_." He turned around – his face was drawn tight with a frustrated frown and pursed lips. "It's not that I'm not thankful to have your support. I _am_. But I know what I'm doing the same way you know what you're doing on a basketball court, so I would thank you to remember that I actually know what I'm doing!"

Daiki blinked. Sometimes, it was easy to forget that beneath the cheerful smile and playful attitude, Kise was in fact both serious and sharp, especially when it was required from him.

Kise took a deep, calming breath and closed his eyes. "Aominecchi, I would never tell you how to play basketball. Please have the same respect for _my_ field of expertise."

Daiki almost asked, _which one_; but felt that the joking tone wasn't suited to the request. Kise was being fair – Daiki would probably have been beyond furious if Kise had ever tried to make like he knew more about basketball than he did – and so, he really should swallow his pride and apologise.

"Whatever, fine," was all that he said.

Kise let out a breath, and turned around, pulling the hood back up over his head.

"We should go," he said, and began walking again.

Daiki kicked at the ground as he followed behind, feeling rather too ashamed of himself and his damn pride to walk beside Kise.

* * *

As it turned out, though, Kise was right. Just the next afternoon, the players had broken through to the second floor, and everyone was talking about a "beater".

Mixed answers came back about what exactly _happened_ in the boss chamber for the first floor dungeon, but the resounding image was that there was a player who was better than all the beta testers (who had already earned some ire from other players), and gone on to proclaim he was better than all of them.

"The monsters are stronger on this floor, don't you think, Aominecchi?" Kise asked after they finished a quest on the second floor a few days after they'd arrived. They'd both fallen into the yellow in their health bars; they were both still trying to figure out which kinds of styles they preferred with swords. Today, even with the amount of switching they'd done, they'd taken a few too many hits for comfort.

"Obviously," Daiki answered, rolling his eyes. "That's usually how this works."

"I don't think I like using spears," Kise said. "I guess it's just as well that I haven't put many points towards mastery of it."

"I think I like this one," Daiki replied. Yesterday he'd switched from the simple one-handed sword to a rapier, and he was finding that he preferred the agility and speed required in its use, as well as the damage output, in comparison to any of the other sword types he'd tried so far.

"It suits you," Kise agreed absently as he scrolled through his menu screen, deciding which weapon he wanted to use. "It's a bit like how you play basketball."

Daiki blinked. "What?"

Kise looked up. His cheeks were a little bit pink. "Well, if you think about it... it makes sense, right? You're the fastest basketball player, and you were the craziest scorer on a team with a guy who never missed a single three point shot. You're highly agile as well. The rapier – that's what you're using, right? The blade itself is relatively light, in comparison to the other kinds of swords, and good use involves being fast and dealing a lot of damage. If you think about it, doing damage is kind of like scoring baskets. So the way you move and the damage you do, it's a bit like... how you... play basketball."

Daiki almost wanted to say something that would embarrass Kise, like, _you spend too much time thinking about the way I play basketball_, but managed to hold his tongue. The flushed, uncomfortable look on Kise's face, and the way he'd faltered over the end of his sentence; this, after he'd actually indulged Daiki's curiosity about his absent-minded comment, in addition to the strain their friendship had been under after their first floor spat, warned him away from a teasing comment.

Instead he just shrugged. "Well, okay then."

Kise seemed glad that he wasn't making a fuss about it. "It's too bad that I can't really translate the way I play basketball into swordplay," he whined. "You have it so easy, Aominecchi."

They turned towards the direction of the town. The light of the day was slowly leaving – it was time to head back to the inn. Daiki turned the question of Kise's play and Kise's potential weapon set around in his mind.

Even here, Kise would probably never be able to sustain movement like his for longer than his time limit. The strain of copying was mental as well as physical, after all. Kise could probably use any weapon well, in all honesty, but he would never excel at rapier use the way he would.

"Maybe a defensive and offensive combination," he mumbled to himself. Kise loved scoring baskets, but he could be a fierce defender too. He had to have some aptitude for it in the first place to mimic Murasakibara. And it wasn't as if Kise had never given him reason to change his course during a one-on-one play.

"I'm sorry, what?"

Kise was looking at him. He'd finally stopped pondering over the menu. A quick once over told Daiki that Kise had fallen back on a simple one-handed sword. He hadn't hated that one, Daiki remembered.

"Maybe you need a shield to balance it," he said, feeling awkward. Okay, he was really glad he hadn't said anything before. Kise could be a very shameless person, and _he'd_ struggled with this whole thing – Daiki didn't usually do this kind of crap, but it was _Kise_, and maybe the gesture could be a bit of an apology for the way he'd been a bit of an asshole the other day.

Kise made a humming noise as he turned the idea around in his head. Daiki looked up at the sky. It was a shame he didn't really have the time for napping. Not that he'd really thought much about napping recently. Every day was consumed with the fierce will to survive; the only sure way to survive was to get out. That meant being strong, and fighting with the other strong players to clear the game, and being strong enough to not get killed needlessly.

"I'll go get a shield tomorrow morning," Kise announced, breaking through his thoughts. "Since Aominecchi thinks it's a good idea."

"You have the Col for that?" Daiki asked.

Kise nodded. "I mean, I'm only getting a basic shield, it shouldn't cost too much. Ahhh, Aominecchi, these clothes make me want to cry."

This was a recurring complaint in the morning. Daiki couldn't help but agree with the sentiment, although not with its extremity. He would never admit it, especially not to Kise, but he actually did care what he looked like.

"Kise, shut up."

"These clothes don't make me look good at _all_," Kise continued, completely ignoring Daiki's order. Not that he really cared – there was something comforting about Kise's enduring vanity. "They're just so _unflattering_ Aominecchi, how am I supposed to keep wearing this day in and day out?"

"Oh my god, you're such a little princess."

"Surely we aren't expected to wear this for the entire time we're stuck in this place."

"_Kise_."

"_Aominecchi_."

Thankfully, they were reaching the town, and soon he would be able to get away from Kise and go take a bath, and then they'd eat and sleep.

Daiki had been hesitant at first, but Kise had worn him down after the first few nights here. It was ridiculous, keeping two rooms at an inn when they could share and split room costs. Saving Col was another way to protect themselves; the less spent on things like lodgings, the more could be spent on weapons and armour.

That's what Daiki told himself, especially when Kise was at his most annoying. The idea of not doing what he could to protect Kise – the memory of his face in the square of the Town of Beginnings was burned into his brain – bothered him almost as much as Kise himself did. Even if they'd spent a lot of time together in junior high, they'd never spent this much consecutive time together, and Daiki felt it grating on his nerves. Kise could be a lot of work to spend time with because he was so exuberant. Besides those times when he went quiet (usually because he was thinking too much about the fact that they were trapped in a death game), he was energetic and excitable and it was so much _effort_.

Their living arrangements with shared lodgings meant there wasn't much time to be alone, either. Sometimes it was good, the way that you weren't alone, because it was at night when they weren't distracted by the task of fighting to survive that they remembered where they were and why and what the consequences were for failure, and just hearing the other person breathing in the room with you made it feel more bearable.

But it also sucked because Daiki _liked_ being alone sometimes. Satsuki was good at knowing when he needed time to himself, and always let him have the time he needed. And even on the rare occasion that she didn't, he always had his room at home to himself.

Kise didn't understand that, he felt. Kise took his need for alone time too personally, and Daiki suspected that Kise found it difficult to keep his mind off their situation when he was left alone.

"Aominecchi, are you alright?"

Daiki was jerked from his thoughts by Kise's voice.

"Yeah," he grunted.

"It's just, you were about to walk past the inn."

He looked around. Oh.

"Just... thinking," he admitted. "I miss Satsuki."

It wasn't a lie. But it wasn't what he'd been thinking about. Kise nodded and put a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm sure Momocchi misses you too," he said quietly. "I bet she's scared out of her wits."

"Satsuki's smarter than that," Daiki replied, but the thought niggled at him anyway. "She knows I'm too stubborn to die this easily."

Kise laughed and walked into the inn. Daiki paused for a moment to look at the sky.

"Satsuki, you'd be proud of me, sticking with Kise like this, I bet," he mumbled, before he went inside.

Kise was sitting at a table pondering over the inn's menu. Inn food wasn't great quality, since it was all pre-made NPC food, but it also wasn't exorbitantly expensive. He smiled when Daiki sat down across from him. Kise seemed to sense Daiki's thoughtful mood, and dinner was quieter than usual.

As they lay in their inn room, Daiki lay awake and listened to the sounds of Kise's breathing.

_It's not real_, he often thought, except that it sounded exactly the same as it did when they lay in the same room at Teikou training camps, and that was very real.

Even though Kise was driving him crazy, sharing the room at night made it easier to get through it. Daiki had never had trouble sleeping at night before (except after Tetsu and Kagami beat him), but there was something about being trapped in a _game_ where the consequence for failure was _death_ that made him feel restless. There was a constant thrum of adrenaline that had yet to settle, especially when the days were passed with battles, especially on days like today when health bars dropped lower than usual and _we could die_ became suddenly less abstract.

He missed Satsuki and easy days spent napping at school and listening to Satsuki whine about the bitchiness of other girls. He missed the way she would complain about his uselessness but then go and help him out with things anyway.

She would be so much help here. With Satsuki by his side, there wasn't much the world could throw at him that he couldn't deal with. She'd see all the numbers and her brilliant mind and intuition would sort out the best styles for them to use and the best ways to level up and she'd keep a cool, calm head and get them the hell out of this.

He listened to Kise breathe, and the familiarity of it lulled him to sleep.

* * *

Kise ends up liking the shield. It works well for their combination, too – they can pull some good switches where Kise comes in with the shield after Daiki does a fast skill combination to catch the retributive attack. It's almost _fun_ now, to go out questing and fighting. Daiki enjoys the adrenaline rush he gets from battle.

It's a bit like basketball. It's not quite as fun, and it's not what Daiki would consider to be an adequate replacement for basketball, but it's good. He gets the same kind of unstoppable feeling sometimes when he and Kise go out treasure hunting or questing.

Things between him and Kise are weird here. Sometimes it's a bit like Teikou, with the powerful feeling like nothing can ever beat them, and the spending time together and eating and teasing and shit, except that all the things that they did at Teikou are gone. And other days, Daiki wants to rip Kise's hair out because he's just so _done_ with dealing with him and his melodrama day in and day out, and sometimes Kise looks at him like he wants to murder him too.

There's just too much _history_ with them sometimes too, and Daiki's good at basketball and fighting and anything that doesn't involve thinking so much as feeling and going with his instincts, and he does, really, care about making sure Kise gets through this shit alive and intact, but he can't hug Kise like he hugs Satsuki when Kise goes quiet and takes on a painful look like he's not really sure they're going to make it out the other side of this nightmare.

Well, he probably _could_ hug him, but it would be weird. He's decided that it would definitely be weird. It's weird that he's even thought about hugging Kise. Arms around necks are one thing. Hugs, like, _proper_ hugs, that's another thing entirely.

They're on the nineteenth floor in January when Kise gets invited to party up with a group of strangers.

In hindsight, Daiki will think that it should have been surprising that it took so long for it to happen at all. They're not in the lead group clearing Floor 20, but they probably could be if they worked a little harder. They're strong – they have to be, since they're going around in a pair instead of a larger group. But at the time, it seemed pretty surprising. Even if Kise was wandering around without a hood, and getting along with people who decided that they might as well talk to the model, he'd never been outright asked to play with any of them.

"You're Kise Ryouta, right?"

It's how most of them start the conversation. Kise turned a bright, cheerful, model smile on anyone who approached him – usually girls, but occasionally guys. It was the same this time.

"You should party with us!" says one of the girls. She's got a cutesy shy smile thing going on. She has a girl friend with her, and they seem to have two boys tagging along too, who seem a bit annoyed by the fact that they weren't able to dissuade them from going up to Kise.

"Ah, that's really nice of you to offer," Kise said, smiling. "I'm partied up with Aominecchi, though."

The girls turned to look at him. "Oh," one of them started, "I didn't know you were like that."

"What the fuck," Daiki said, staring back at them. "What the _fuck_."

"Oh, no!" Kise had gone _really _red. "No, it's not like that, Aominecchi and I are just friends! We were teammates in junior high, it's not like that."

Daiki's brain feels like it's come to an abrupt, shuddering halt. "Do they think we're fucking or something?"

It's a pretty indelicate thing to say, Daiki will admit later. Kise looked stricken.

"They've just completely misunderstood," Kise was running his words together. _Must be worried about his image_. "We're not like that," he says again to the girls, "really."

"Just go with them," Daiki said. Kise has a reputation to maintain, and Daiki wasn't sure why this all of a sudden made him feel so annoyed. "We'll catch up later."

Daiki turned away and opened up the menu to leave the party that they'd set up. When he didn't hear footsteps, he looked up.

Kise was looking at him with an odd expression.

"What are you waiting for, Kise?" he asked. "Just go already."

"Alright," he said softly. "We'll catch up later, then."

He should go down a few floors and do a few quests he knows he can solo and shit, but with Kise had gone, his motivation all but evaporated. Daiki wandered around for a bit before finding a nice spot to lie down in. This floor had nice weather, even though it's supposed to be January.

He couldn't sleep though. He was consumed by thoughts about the assumption those girls jumped to.

Thinking back on the last few months, it all _looks_ kind of suspicious, if he's honest with himself. They share an inn room, even now when they could probably easily afford to have separate rooms. They always party together, and other than the rare occasion when Kise is approached by someone who recognises him, they don't make much of an effort to get to know anyone. Daiki doesn't do it because he doesn't want to care about these people who are almost inevitably going to die. He has all the people he needs in his life at home. But it's weird that Kise hasn't been chatting up a storm. He's always been very sociable.

Maybe Kise feels obligated to stay with him?

Argh, this is all so annoying. Kise is annoying. Why do they stick together, anyway?

Daiki'll probably be better off without him. Kise's reputation won't get shot to shit if they split up either.

He doesn't care if these strangers think he's gay – they don't matter to him, and he'll never see them again. But what if, when they get out, someone says something about Kise?

Daiki closed his eyes. This was stupid. Kise was stupid.

He woke a few hours later, and stood with a groan. He'd woken because it was cooling down, the day reaching its end.

He hadn't sorted out what he was going to do about Kise, but that was okay.

When he arrived back at the inn room they were sharing, Kise was waiting for him, hands clasped loosely between his knees. He looked up as Daiki entered.

"Aominecchi."

"Kise."

It was _awkward_. That was even worse. They'd argued a few times, but for the most part it was about stupid shit and they settled it with a bit of a tussle, and that was that. They weren't _awkward_ with each other. There was never any reason to be. They'd been teammates and rivals, friends and enemies. Kise'd seen him as a naive kid and a raging asshole.

"I think we should play separate for a while," Daiki said, breaking the extended silence between them.

Kise's lips thinned as he pressed them together, and he looked down at his hands.

"This is about earlier, isn't it?" he asked. His voice was low, but it sounded resigned more than angry.

Daiki rolled his eyes. "Kise."

"Yeah, okay," Kise said. He didn't look at Daiki as he spoke. "I'll... go get another room, okay?"

He got up and pushed past Daiki to leave, but paused in the doorframe.

"Don't be a stranger, Aominecchi, okay? I'd like for us to play together again sometime."

As he stepped out and left his vision, Daiki had the creeping feeling that somehow, there had been some kind of enormous misunderstanding between them, but he couldn't imagine _what_.

* * *

Please don't kill me, this chapter kicked my ass so hard. I hope it didn't suck as bad as I feel like it did.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 also known as the one where there is a lot of really bad time-skipping because Aomine is stubbornly boring sobs

* * *

It was surprisingly difficult to fall asleep that night.

Daiki lay awake on the bed, staring at the roof. The room felt big and empty, and its silence felt as if it was crowding him. He'd say he couldn't sleep because he'd slept so much earlier, but he'd never had any problem falling asleep at night when he'd been napping.

The room was too quiet.

He sighed and hauled himself up. Clearly, he wasn't going to sleep much tonight, if at all. He might as well get up and go out and do some levelling up out on some lower floor plains.

He opened up his menu, equipping armour and weapons and skills, then stood, and as quietly as he could, left the room. He tried to maintain the silence as he walked out – other players would be sleeping (Kise would be sleeping) and he didn't want to wake them.

He didn't want to think about what had been keeping him up, but as he walked to the warp gate, his mind inevitably snagged on what was bothering him.

Kise hadn't looked him in the eye once as they'd spoken. He'd looked _at_ him, but...

And that wasn't even going into the fact that _apparently_, without the sound of Kise's breath in the room, it was _too quiet_ to sleep. Daiki had _never_ found a condition under which he couldn't sleep. He'd slept in full daylight, sun shining on and in his face on the hard, concrete roof of Touou's school buildings, he'd slept in the pitch darkness of his room in the night, he'd slept on a noisy bus and though the chirping of birds, chatter and shouts of kids in a park, and the drone of teachers at school and the silence of the school library as well. And yet, somehow, it was impossible to sleep here now because he could no longer hear the deep, steady sound of Kise's breathing as he slept in the other bed.

Fuck.

As he grunted his destination to the warp gate, Daiki wondered how he managed to become so pathetically _co-dependent_ on Kise.

Maybe it was because he was pathetically co-dependent on Satsuki. After all, he had to admit to himself quietly, he _was_ the one of the two of them who _needed _the other one. He had needed her to hold onto him when he careened off the edge of his talent and fell into the ocean of boredom and darkness, and she had been the moon shining through the night, quietly urging him to _keep going_, because there has to be a light _somewhere_ for the moon to be shining.

Their lives were interminably wrapped around each other, and it was, perhaps, the most comforting fact of his existence.

So that was it, Daiki thought as he looked around himself and found himself on the plains where he knew some fairly strong wolves would spawn. Kise's presence substituted for Satsuki, because when they'd played together it had been their lives that had curled about each other, as one death would most probably lead to the other.

He scowled.

Three wolves spawned.

Daiki was several levels higher than he had been when he'd cleared these last with Kise – he killed the first with a sword combination, but the skill cool down meant he took some damage from the remaining two. A few hundred damage. He should be okay through the next two. The same combination took out the second swiftly, then the third. He was still in the green for health.

Kise would be fine without him. Kise would be surrounded by people – he was that kind of person, after all. Even when he annoyed people, they still gravitated towards him. Kise would be _safer_, he tried to tell himself.

It was just too bad he didn't actually think anyone could keep Kise alive as well as he could. Especially because Kise was just about dumb enough to get himself killed trying to protect other people.

Daiki sighed and readied his blade as the area was bathed in blue light.

The wolves respawned.

* * *

Daiki didn't care about other players – but that didn't mean that he wasn't shocked when he got the news that one of the guilds on the frontline had lost half of its members battling the boss on Floor 25. It had been a quiet night in the inn that night – he was on Floor 22 at the time. He and Kise hadn't been in contact since that strange night in mid-January, and it was mid-February now.

He'd spent the whole day alternately lazing under trees and killing the very few monsters that spawned on this floor, and as such, it was late by the time he reached the inn, having finally decided he'd done enough for the day.

It was strange for the inn to be quiet at the time he arrived back. It was when most players went to go and eat, and this was a pretty major town on the floor, so there were a number of good, but not quite frontline-level, guilds in the area who had yet to raise the funds to buy themselves a home. But tonight, the thing that struck him as he walked into the restaurant area was how _quiet_ it was.

He was saved from actually having to interact with anyone to find out what the fuck was wrong with everyone when he found a copy of the newspaper that was left on one of the tables.

_Aincrad Liberation Squad Decimated_.

_More than half of this frontline guild's members were killed earlier today in the 25__th__ Floor Boss room..._

Daiki didn't bother to read further. He'd heard of the Liberation Squad, of course. Everyone knew the names of the frontline guilds – Daiki himself knew them and their symbols only to avoid being scouted by them. He had no interest in playing along with other people, nor any interest in throwing himself into dangerous situations such as Floor Boss raids. He planned to make it the fuck out of this place, and by his estimate, the best way of doing that was by not needlessly throwing himself into battles with powerful enemies.

That night was the first in which he opened up his friend list to check that Kise was still alive.

(It was not the last.)

* * *

Floor 26 brought a lot of surprises, but the greatest of them was the guild that debuted on the frontline that floor.

The Knights of the Blood Oath seemed to be a small-time guild, from what Daiki gathered from the newspapers and whispers that ran wild. Small, but they had a lot of firepower, with a few skilled, high-level members. Asuna. Heathcliff. Godfree.

The names of frontline players often circulated among the players Daiki kept pace with, and they meant nothing to him.

At least, they meant nothing to him until they started talking about a new sword-and-shield user in their ranks, who was part of the new guild on the frontlines.

"...is in the Knights of the Blood. You know, he was in that art..."

Daiki had only heard the snippet of conversation as he walked through the market, but he came to a sudden stop. He couldn't find the source of the voice – they must have been moving in the opposite direction – his stomach felt somehow hollow.

_No_, he told himself, _they're mistaken, I'm sure._

Apparently, however, Kise was just as popular in the game as he was outside of it, because in the newspaper, there he was; standing next to one of the Knights of the Blood Oath's leaders – the pretty girl one (although she was a little flat for Daiki's tastes). _Asuna_. Daiki heard her name a lot.

_Model Kise Ryouta Joins Knights of the Blood Oath_.

Fuck, Kise was _so annoying_.

(Daiki didn't check every morning and evening after that day that Kise was still alive by looking at his friends list. He _didn't_, okay.

Or at least, no one can _prove_ it, can they.)

* * *

It's just that it bothers him.

Daiki's messing around on the Floor 27 in June, seven months after getting stuck in the death game, when he finally decides to face the fact that checking that Kise's alive every morning and night is probably kind of _weird_.

Kise's fighting on the frontlines with the Knights of the Blood Oath. Daiki's not a low level nobody player, even if he's not crazy enough to go playing solo on the frontlines; he keeps pace with the players that trail a few floors behind the lead group. He knows the names of all the high profile players, and of _course_ Kise would manage to get himself in the thick of them. Stories run rampant across the player base talking about the speed of Lightning Flash Asuna's rapier, of Heathcliff's skill with a sword and shield.

They talk about Kise.

One of the first times Daiki overheard people talking about Kise, he'd laughed because the nerd was complaining about the accuracy of what people were calling him.

"Valkyries are _female_," he guy had complained.

"But apparently he looks like a girl," commented the guy's friend.

"Only if you don't see him standing next to an actual girl. He clearly looks like a dude when he's standing next to Asuna-san."

Daiki didn't know what a valkyrie actually was, but he was pretty sure Kise probably looked like one anyway.

But fighting on the frontlines was _dangerous_. Daiki had always figured he and Kise would hang back from the lead group, keeping themselves strong, comfortable and _safe_.

It just about figures that Kise would go and do something stupid and annoying like risking his neck to clear the game.

"Okay, I'll grant you he's pretty looking for a boy," Daiki overheard as he tuned back into the nerdy guy's conversation, "but I definitely don't think he's goddess-worthy pretty or anything."

"He's lucky though. Maybe that's it. There haven't been a lot of casualties in parties he's been in."

"That's _luck_, not divine intervention..."

Daiki tuned out of the conversation again. It was starting to remind him of Midorima, and he was going to have to kill himself if he was actually missing that nutcase.

...he missed everyone, when he thought about it.

He'd never really been alone like this before. It was always only a temporary alone-ness, a temporary sparing of the presence of Satsuki or anyone else. He'd liked those small reprieves, and thought it meant he liked to be alone.

Turns out, he didn't really like it so much. He was even missing the most annoying of his old and new teammates. And he _really_ missed Satsuki.

"I miss basketball," Daiki mumbled, dropping his face into his crossed arms on the table. "I hope you're not too worried, Satsuki. You'd probably be so mad at me right now, letting Kise go off on his own..."

He sighed. "I'm kind of mad at me," he added. "And now I'm talking to myself."

Daiki stood and paid for his meal before leaving. He was sure if he really wanted some company, he could find any number of players willing to party up with him or have him in their guild. He wasn't weak, and people willing to fight in the front were rarer than those who hung back.

He didn't want just _any_ company, though. He didn't want to get to know some strangers who were probably going to die. It would be better to be with Kise. Kise wasn't going to die. (Kise _promised_.) He already knew Kise too.

"Fuck, am I actually missing that idiot too? Ugh." _And he's the only one I could actually see..._

There was always the temptation to message Kise. Kise himself hadn't reached out to him, but Daiki simply attributed that to the fact that the blond boy was frustratingly and annoyingly social, and probably had so many people around him that he didn't even really think about Daiki. He ignored the small voice at the back of his head that sounded a lot like Satsuki that said he was so wrong it hurt.

A message alert popped up in the corner of his vision. That could only be...

_Kise_.

'_Aominecchi! I thought you'd probably forget, so I thought I'd remind you it's my birthday soon! I'd really like it if you could come and celebrate with me! It's pretty rude to talk about the real world here, so no one else knows, and then I thought, Aominecchi already knows, even if he's forgotten._

_That's okay, right? You don't have to get me a present or anything! If we were home I'd say your present can be to play one-on-one with me. Just spend the day with me. That can be your present to me!_

_I won't take no for an answer!_

_Kise'_

Hah. Now that he'd been reminded, it _was_ Kise's birthday soon. It'd be his soon, too.

"Satsuki's gonna cry all day, I bet," he said quietly. He purposely did not think about what she was going to be like on his birthday, or on what he thought she would have been like on her own birthday (it had been about one month ago, and it was the first of their birthdays that he could remember not spending with her. He'd spent the day grinding ruthlessly against monsters on Floor 26 to distract himself from the uncomfortable feelings that were prompted by the thought that he was not there for Satsuki's birthday).

'_Yeah, okay. Where do you want to meet?_'

'_How does Floor 28 sound? I haven't seen you on the frontlines, but I'm sure together we can have some fun there!_'

'_Sounds like a plan then_.'

Surely meeting every once in a while couldn't hurt, after all.

And so, the eighteenth of June found Daiki waiting near the warp point for Kise's arrival. He resisted the urge to look up whenever he heard the sound of someone teleporting in.

"Aominecchi!"

He didn't smile, dammit he _didn't._

"Kise."

Kise wasn't wearing the white and red outfit that he was usually spotted in when with his guild today. Instead, he'd gone for something a little more normal. He had a bright smile on his face as he trotted over, waving a hand in the air.

"It's been a while, Aominecchi!"

"Yeah." Why did this have to feel so _awkward_? There was an air of things left unsaid – a feeling as if there was something important that was being ignored. (The way he hadn't looked him in the eye as he left, the feeling that there was somehow something that he had missed, that he had fundamentally misunderstood something...)

"Have you been doing well, Aominecchi?" Kise asks, smiling. "We're going to the dungeon. I want to party with Aominecchi today."

"Yeah, I've been okay. I guess you've been doing okay, I've been hearing about you in the news with that guild you're in."

"Ah, yes! I've been doing pretty well. All the people in the Knights are really nice! Although, most of them are really serious, Aominecchi, they don't take the time to enjoy themselves, especially Asunacchi. They're so driven and focused! I could never be that serious about anything but basketball, I think. I'm sure you understand, Aominecchi." Kise grinned. "After all, it's not like you're fighting on the frontlines."

Daiki frowned. "Satsuki would bring me back to life just to kill me if I got myself killed fighting on the frontlines. I'm not stupid enough to play solo out there."

Kise tilted his head to the side and hummed thoughtfully. "I guess fighting on the frontlines at all is kind of crazy," he admitted. "Ah, but you know, I've really learned a lot from Heathcliff-san and Asunacchi, and I really respect the attitude they take towards clearing the game. Anyway, I bet I could beat you in a duel now." There was a sly edge to Kise's words and smile as he looked at Daiki from the corner of his eye.

"Of course you could, stupid," Daiki told him, rolling his eyes. "I'm a rapier user. You have the unfair advantage of a shield. This isn't basketball."

"I miss basketball," Kise grumbled. "If we were home, your present to me would definitely have to be to play one on one with me!"

Daiki reached out to hit the back of Kise's head lightly. "So, did you have a plan for what you wanted to do today?"

Kise pouted and rubbed the back of his head. Daiki knew he hadn't hit him that hard, and even if he _had_, it wasn't like they felt pain _anyway_, so he refused to feel any remorse whatsoever. "We're just going to do some quests and stuff. I just... yeah, I just wanted to spend my birthday with you. Don't you think it's lonely here, after all?"

Daiki shrugged. Like hell he was going to let Kise know he agreed.

(He wasn't going to tell him about the loneliness that permeated the room he slept in at night and the way he still missed the familiar sound of Kise's breathing, or the way that he'd almost cried when he'd returned to an empty room on Satsuki's birthday and then got caught up thinking about how even if she was surrounded by all of their friends, she would definitely notice that he wasn't there because she would notice it every day, but especially on her birthday, and they had never spent this much time apart ever and surely the fact that he wasn't there was as big a hole in her life as it was in his?)

A familiar grip on his wrist broke him from his thoughts, and he looked at Kise.

"Come on then, Aominecchi!"

Kise's smile seemed a little forced, but somehow it still took the edge off his negative thoughts, so Daiki let his mouth twist in a familiar smirk and followed the only piece of familiar left in his new life where he led.

* * *

"Happy birthday, Dai-chan."

Even though she knew that he wouldn't have cared for them at all, Satsuki settled the bouquet of flowers she'd brought on the small bedside table in his hospital room.

"Everyone else is going to come by later," she said to him. Her smile was small and trembling. "I decided to come early and have some quality time with you."

She reached beneath the blankets to pull out his hand. It was painful, looking at Dai-chan like this, no matter how often she came to visit him. And she came to visit him often.

He looked small, his body wasting away in this bed. Dai-chan's body had always responded well to any conditioning it went through, and with his childhood spent racing around basketball courts and climbing trees, he'd never really gone through the coltish, awkward, skinny look that a lot of boys developed when they were teenaged and shot up to stand at first just under six foot, then well over it. A life spent _doing_ had built him up, but the last nine months had made his body look odd to her, bony and thin when it never had been before.

"You were supposed to get taller still," she mumbled, gently brushing her thumb across the back of Dai-chan's bony hand. There was no muscle or fat left anywhere his body now, with all these months spent lying unmoving in a bed, kept alive with what sustenance could be imbued into his system through tubes. He was skin and bones beneath her touch.

Dai-chan had never felt _fragile_ before.

"It's been so weird not having you around this summer. Usually you'd drag me out to go hunting for cicadas, and then I'd drag you to go shopping with me. And we'd play so much basketball, with Ki-chan and Kagamin and Tetsu-kun and even Midorin and Takao-kun."

Satsuki took a deep breath. "I shouldn't be crying still, should I, Dai-chan? But it's hard on special days like today not to cry. That's why I came early today, you know. I cried so much on Ki-chan's birthday, Kagamin and Midorin both looked so scared! You would have laughed at them."

She wiped her eyes and cheeks, and tried smiling again. "Dai-chan, I hope you and Ki-chan are taking care of each other." She rested her head on the bed, the top of her head just touching his leg under the blanket, and looked at his fingers. "Midorin hasn't had your lucky item brought in yet today," she noted. "He must be bringing it himself."

She let the room fall quiet, except for the beeping of the monitor that signalled Dai-chan's still-beating heart.

"Please wake up soon, Dai-chan."

She said it quietly. It felt somehow wrong to say, especially when even now, so long after that first terrifying month where the people trapped in the game were dropping like flies, people continued to die. At least Dai-chan and Ki-chan were still _alive_.

"Momoi-san, good afternoon."

Satsuki sat up and turned. Akashi-kun was standing in the doorway, a tiny smile tilting at the corners of his mouth.

"Akashi-kun, good afternoon!" Satsuki tried to inject as much cheer as possible into her voice. "I wasn't expecting anyone to arrive until later..."

"I have to be back in Kyoto earlier than expected," Akashi-kun admitted, "so I'll be leaving earlier than I had anticipated. I thought perhaps I should arrive a little earlier to compensate. I'll likely leave while everyone else is still here."

He walked over, and rested a hand gently on her head. "I imagine this day is more difficult for you than for the rest of us," he said. His voice was quiet.

"It's almost worse than my own birthday," Satsuki whispered. "My family and friends... you didn't let me spend my day dwelling on the fact that Dai-chan wasn't there, although it was impossible not to feel it. I spent most of the day doing things with all of you. Today... today I'm spending the day with Dai-chan in the hospital. On his birthday we do whatever he wants to do, you know?" Tears were sliding down her cheeks again. This wasn't _fair_, she wasn't supposed to cry on a happy day like Dai-chan's birthday, and she certainly wasn't supposed to cry in front of _Akashi-kun_, even if his temperament _had_ markedly improved since that first Winter Cup.

Akashi-kun remained silent, his hand on her head gentle.

"Most of his birthdays we spent in parks playing basketball," she told Akashi-kun, a wobbly smile tugging at her. "I bet you're not surprised at all."

"I can't say I am," Akashi-kun agreed. "I was acquainted with Daiki the basketball idiot, after all."

Satsuki laughed. "Dai-chan is Dai-chan."

"Momoi-san... Satsuki."

She paused, tilting her head as she looked at him. Akashi-kun had, for the most part, always been kind and gentlemanly to her, as would be expected from someone of his background; and as such he had never taken the liberty to address her by her first name like he did the rest of the Teikou team. It had seemed to be a matter of propriety rather than a matter of him not considering her to be an important figure within their little group; she had understood the distinction, and it had never bothered her.

"While I understand that you are much closer to Tetsuya and would likely discuss such things with him rather than with myself, I just wished to extend the offer to listen if you ever wish to speak with someone."

That was... unexpected. Satsuki smiled again, and this time, it didn't wobble. She reached up to clasp Akashi-kun's hand between her palms and bring it down from where it had been resting on her head.

"Thank you. Ah, can I maybe?"

The rest of her question was cut off as she heard Kagamin's argumentative voice travel down the hall.

"Taiga, Shintarou and Tetsuya must be arriving," Akashi-kun commented. There was an amused curl to one of the corners of his mouth.

The addition of the other people brought new life to the room. Akashi busied himself calling a nurse for a vase, then arranging the flowers Satsuki had brought, as Kagamin, Tetsu-kun and Midorin took turns to chatter at Dai-chan, and with each other. Satsuki took the proffered lucky item for Dai-chan, and settled it next to the vase.

Most of them came to visit either Ki-chan or Dai-chan fairly frequently; Satsuki herself spent a large number of the afternoons she didn't spend with the basketball club sitting quietly in Dai-chan's hospital room doing homework, every so often swapping to spend an afternoon in Ki-chan's room. Kagamin and Tetsu-kun visited once a week or so, usually on a day when Satsuki herself would be there; Midorin would visit every fortnight. Akashi-kun and Muk-kun stopped by if either one happened to be in Tokyo, but neither was particularly often.

Satsuki was pretty sure that this little gathering was more for her sake than for Dai-chan's, but it still warmed her heart to see them here together to celebrate his birthday.

Before he left, Akashi-kun pulled her aside.

"You may call me whatever you would like to, Satsuki," he told her, answering her unfinished question from earlier. "My offer will stand in perpetuity."

She should have guessed that he would know what she was going to ask.

* * *

Things will be more interesting in the next chapter and less time-skippy and filler-y I promise ;~;


	4. Chapter 4

I AM FINALLY DONE WITH THIS CHAPTER OH MY GOD this has been so hard okay.

I hope you enjoy this. I'm really sorry I do so much terrible time skipping omg

* * *

_We've been stuck here way too long._

This is the second thought that crosses Daiki's mind every morning after he wakes up in his home on Floor 35. He picked this place because it's close to a rather nice forest that has no creatures that could kill him in his sleep anymore, because the Inn on this floor sells nice food, and because he couldn't afford a house on Floor 22. Also because if he had a house on Floor 22 he'd probably spend the rest of the time spent in the game fishing and while that sounds nice, he wants to be able to protect Kise if he has to. He's not sure why he continues to have this niggling sense that he needs to be able to protect Kise, since Kise's definitely stronger than him, and has the advantage of a shield, but he hasn't been able to throw it off yet.

He hasn't had to protect Kise yet either; he and Kise haven't partied up since Kise's birthday last year, although the blond boy had bothered him almost incessantly on the lead up to his own birthday; and Kise still insists on fighting on the frontlines with his stupid guild. _At least he had the sense to join the strongest one_. Even though fighting on the frontlines is much safer than it used to be – people still die here and there, but there hasn't been any loss of life in a boss fight since March – Daiki still thinks it's stupid to risk your neck that way.

The first thought that crosses Daiki's mind every morning is _please let Kise still be alive_. His first action every morning is to check that his name is still comfortably and familiarly situated on his friends list. It's weird. It's definitely, definitely weird that he does this every day when he wakes.

Sometimes he can't help but wonder if Kise does the same thing in the mornings.

They've been here just about a year and a half. It's going to be Kise's birthday again soon. Daiki's still playing solo – it's not the best way of earning Col on his own, but he doesn't care enough and doesn't like people enough to be an information broker or a merchant or a blacksmith. Floor 35 is nice enough, and his home is comfortable enough, if spartan because he only comes here to sleep.

Kise would make all sorts of squawking noises about it, he's sure. Kise's house is probably well furnished and comfortable, even though Kise probably spends just about as much time in his home as Daiki does – which is to say, not all that much.

Daiki's learned to live with the perpetual ache that is missing Satsuki, missing Tetsu, missing Kagami, missing those bloody weirdos Midorima and Murasakibara and Akashi, and _basketball_. God but he misses basketball. Sword fighting and battle is all well and good for making his blood sing, but he doesn't like to take risks with his chances of survival, and he doesn't push for a challenge very often. So the days have passed by. He's reasonably strong, although he probably couldn't solo the frontlines like the Black Swordsman. He could do it with Kise, he's pretty sure.

Daiki pulls himself out of bed, once he's reassured himself of Kise's continued existence. It's summer in Aincrad at the moment; not the blistering, sweltering, humid kind of summer that he's more familiar with, but it's comfortable, with sunny skies and the occasional cool breeze. It's napping weather if he'd ever heard of it. He's always more than half tempted to sleep the days away. But really, it wasn't exactly safe to go napping outside. It wasn't that he had _enemies_, exactly; Daiki wasn't high profile or rich enough to have enemies. It's just... he _might_ have pissed off a few guys here and there. It's not _his_ fault people don't like his attitude towards the game. Okay, and maybe some of them got a bit offended when he told them they were going to die.

A few frontline guilds have tried to scout him – he maintains a few floors distance from the frontlines, but at this point, he's been heard of, even if he's not famous. The frontline guilds are always hungry for more players to fill out their frontline ranks. Even Kise's guild has tried to rope him in. He didn't have the heart to tell their recruiter that they needed to be a little bit blonder for him to even bother considering the proposal. But really, he doesn't want to join a guild, even the big guilds where there isn't quite so much camaraderie anymore, because they're more like an army than a group of people getting along and working and fighting together. He's managed to successfully avoid getting too close to anyone, and so there is no death to fear.

Except for Kise.

Of course, the idea of Kise dying is ludicrous, because Kise _promised_, and because Daiki simply can't imagine a world without Kise in it. It's just so impossible, to think there could ever be a time when Kise would not cheerfully call out his name, or beg to play basketball with him, or whine about whatever it is that he's whining about today, or look at Daiki with golden eyes hardened with determination. And besides, the idea of it makes his stomach twist up in knots, so why dwell on something that's never going to happen?

Daiki's morning routine has led him through the motions of equipping his clothes and light armour that doesn't inhibit his movements, and out the door of his house. It's a later start than most people get to, so there aren't a lot of people around. That suits Daiki fine, as he wanders towards the teleport gate and warps to the Floor whose dungeon he's working through at the moment. It's a long journey to the dungeon from the main town on this floor, and it's _boring_. Walking everywhere sucks, but teleport crystals for anywhere but towns are expensive as hell, and just not worth it.

Still, it's such a nice day. Daiki really wants to give in to his urge to throw himself down on the grass and nap, except that now that he's pulled up his map data, he's noticed that Kise is on this floor at the moment.

It's weird – usually when Kise's in a hunting party with his guild, he'll be on a frontline floor. Almost unthinkingly, Daiki finds himself rerouting himself to coincide with Kise's party in the dungeon. They're heading towards a quest boss Daiki hasn't cleared yet, but knows of – he's not _quite_ strong enough to solo this one.

He'd been keeping an absent eye on the map, keeping track of the group of players and Kise as he wandered through the labyrinth of caves, when one of them _disappeared_.

Dread curled its way into Daiki's stomach and his step faltered, staring dumbly at the map. Maybe it was a mistake; maybe someone was just stupid, maybe—

Another one disappeared. Daiki felt as if he was going to throw up, except he was pretty sure that's not a thing you can actually do here, and he pulled himself together and starts to _run_ as a third disappeared.

He's not too far away. He's not, he will make it in time, he _will_. Kise looks like he's throwing himself in front of people, and then presumably being knocked back, and Daiki has never felt so panicked before.

Kise is going to get himself _killed_. Why hadn't Daiki seen this coming and done something about it sooner? Kise would never let himself be okay with standing by and letting other people die, he'd try to protect them and fight for them, just like on the basketball court and Daiki would never have let this happen if he hadn't let the weirdness settle between them, if he hadn't let them split up. If Kise died he was never going to be able to forgive himself...

He arrived at the chamber only to watch another player staring at him with wide, terrified eyes, before they burst into blue light. They quest boss they were battling was a large skeleton thing, and still had far too much health, and those players remaining from the hunting party were cowering towards the back. Kise was lying on the ground, his shield gone – likely it had taken so much damage that it had become irreparable.

Daiki didn't even think before he barrelled over to where Kise was lying and dropping to his knees to get a closer look at him. His health was red, but not dropping. He was _alive_.

He didn't have the time to sit on that, or get out any healing items, because at that moment a shadow fell across them both. Daiki drew his sword and turned on his knees, jabbing at the monster and pushing it backwards.

"What are you _doing_," he hissed at the players who were still hiding towards the back. "You need to help me if Kise's going to get out of here alive!"

Behind him, he heard Kise groan.

"Are you up, sleeping beauty?" Daiki asked, looking behind him. The words, ones he'd used to greet Kise in the morning sometimes before they'd split, felt comforting and familiar on his tongue.

The boss creature roared. The players hadn't made any move to engage it in battle.

"Guess I have to do everything myself," Daiki muttered, before throwing himself towards it. He could feel his blood singing, every nerve in his body thrumming with the knowledge that this was a life and death battle – this monster could kill him, this monster could kill Kise, and if he failed they were both dead.

It would be foolhardy to engage any long combinations, he figured – even if he dealt the damage, he might not survive the retaliatory attack while stuck in the post-skill cooldown. Better was to attempt short combinations he was sure he could survive. It would make the battle longer, but he wouldn't be doing either of them any favours by dying now.

What he hadn't counted on was Kise jumping back into battle.

A low-grade healing item had shored his health back into the yellow zone, and a second shield had been recovered from his inventory. They weren't partied up, so switching properly wasn't an option, but his shield took the blow aimed for Daiki.

"Idiot, get back and heal more!"

Kise smiled at him. "Don't have any more healing items," he told him. "And there's no sense in you needlessly taking damage."

"I wouldn't have to if those morons over there would fucking do something," Daiki snapped, turning and running towards the beast again, feeling the rapier thrum beneath his fingers as the skill activated. Three rapid hits, and then he was sent flying from a punch, and landed heavily on his back. _Damn_.

He pulled himself up and readied his blade again. Kise had rallied someone from the wall into the fight – they were switching, though Daiki noticed that Kise was taking the forward position significantly more often than the boy he'd gotten to join him, and was taking damage again.

_Fuck_.

Daiki ran forward, executing one of his longer, and more powerful, skill combinations. With its attention on Kise and the other kid, who were actually actively on the quest, it was unlikely that he would take too much damage while he was stuck in the cooldown. He watched as it descended upon Kise and his party member furiously, its health dropping low and triggering a second battle phase.

It was just too bad that Kise's friend picked that moment to freeze again in terror. Kise was in front of the boy in an instant, him and his shield taking the blow meant for the boy.

Daiki launched another attack. "Finish it!"

"I'll cover you," Kise promised his teammate.

Daiki wanted to tell Kise not to do it, that he was stupid, that he should just kill it himself because they'd all be spared a whole bunch of grief and this kid was going to botch it and get _both _of them killed...

Daiki watched, frozen in cooldown, as the two of them approached the monster. Kise swung his sword for the first attack, and knocked it off balance.

"Switch!"

This was almost painful to watch. The boy switched, but he seemed too frightened to make the final hit and kill it. The monster swung at him, and Kise charged in to take the hit on his shield. It threw him back.

"What are you doing?" Daiki roared, "One hit will do it!"

He didn't watch to check that the kid did as he was told. Kise had taken damage in that hit, and he didn't have a lot of health to _spare_ right now. He dropped down to his knees beside him. Kise was groaning.

"I bet that would have hurt," Kise said, and looked up at him. Wordlessly, Daiki reached into his pouch and took out a healing crystal.

"You're so stupid," he told Kise. "Stupid Kise, still always doing these stupid things."

Kise laughed. "Yeah." He used the healing crystal, and Daiki heaved a private sigh of relief, seeing Kise's health bar return to a safe green.

"Clearly this guild of yours can't protect you properly," he added. "So obviously I'm going to have to do it."

Kise stared at him, his mouth parted and eyes widened in shock. Daiki rubbed the back of his neck, feeling awkward.

"Aominecchi..."

It was at this point that the rest of Kise's party members approached. Daiki scowled at them (these useless bastards almost got Kise killed), but to his annoyance, this didn't make them back off.

"Give us a minute, okay?" Kise asked Daiki in a low tone. "I'll send them all home, and then we can talk, okay?"

Daiki nodded, and backed away and leaned against the wall. He closed his eyes, and let the sound of Kise's voice, words indistinct, wash over him. When he heard the sound of footsteps, he opened his eyes and looked up.

Now that he had the time, he looked Kise over. He looked worn out, somehow. There was a defeated line to his shoulders that Daiki was familiar with from times when Kise had walked off the basketball court in defeat.

Kise's smile was small but honest as he came to a stop in front of him. "We should take this somewhere a little more private," he offered. "I have a nice place in Algade, on Floor 50."

"Okay."

The walk from the dungeon was long and quiet. Kise didn't fill the silence the way that he usually would; Daiki didn't even try his hand at it. The walk through Algade was almost maddening; the biggest populated city in Aincrad these days, and the place was maddeningly confusing to navigate. People called out greetings to Kise as he walked through the streets, a few commenting on how early he had decided to come home today, and one or two asking who Daiki was. Kise laughed and waved at them, but didn't answer any questions.

Kise's place was small, when they finally arrived, but it felt somehow comfortable. Kise waved him over to the couch, then took the opportunity to change into something more casual than his flashy Knight uniform and stow away his equipment.

Kise sat down heavily on the couch next to him, and leaned back. They sat in silence for a moment. Daiki wasn't sure how to start this conversation.

"I was really happy, you know," Kise started. "When I saw Aominecchi in front of me, when I thought I was going to die."

Daiki reached over to knock his fist gently against Kise's head. "Idiot. You scared the life out of me. What happened to that promise, huh?"

Kise smiled and brushed Daiki's hand away. "Aominecchi, that day..."

Daiki tensed. This was the reason why they had come here, and they both knew it.

"I thought you would be safer," Daiki muttered. "And... you know, your reputation..."

Kise's forehead crinkled as he processed that, and then he seemed to have some kind of realisation; he laughed, and it was probably the best sound Daiki had ever heard in this world, full and honest and real like nothing had felt since that day they split up.

"Aominecchi, you're too much!" he said, grinning. "Ah, there was something I wanted to say, but I guess... well, I guess I underestimated Aominecchi. I didn't think that was something I would do."

Kise stood up. "I'm not going to leave the Knights of the Blood Oath," he informed Daiki. "So, if you want to be a big man and protect me, then Aominecchi's going to have to join us."

Daiki crossed his arms and scowled. "I'm not protecting you! I'm making sure you keep your promise to me."

Kise smiled at him as if he saw right through him. "Sure, Aominecchi."

* * *

The next morning, Daiki woke up to the sound of banging on his front door.

"What the fuck," he groaned as he hauled himself up. Blinking sleepily, he stumbled towards the door and wrenched it open.

"Good morning, Aominecchi!"

Daiki stared at Kise for a moment. "I shouldn't have told you where I lived," he grumbled. "Come in, then."

Kise looked around with interest as Daiki stretched and opened up his menu and start equipping things. His fingers itched to check his friend list like he did every morning, but Kise was _right there_ in front of him. There was no need to check if he was alive.

That made him feel kind of warm inside.

"Aominecchi, I got given the ability to invite you into the guild. Just for today! So you need to accept my invitation when I give it to you, and then we're going to go to Grandzam and get you a uniform, and then we'll go and clear the dungeon on Floor 55 with Godfree so he can get an idea about your strength! You're probably not as fast as Asunacchi, but we need all the help we can get on the frontlines, you know."

Daiki frowned, but nodded. Honestly, he felt a little bit of trepidation about going to fight on the frontlines, but clearly he wasn't going to be able to talk Kise out of it, and given yesterday's debacle with the quest boss, there was no way he was going to let Kise walk into a Floor Boss fight without him.

A message popped up on his menu screen. _**Kisery**__ has invited you to join the guild 'Knights of the Blood Oath_'._ Do you accept?_

Daiki's finger hovered over the blue acceptance button for a moment, and then he pressed it. Kise beamed.

"Hurry up then, Aominecchi!"

"I haven't eaten breakfast yet," Daiki complained. "What's got you in such a rush, model-san?"

Kise went pink and pouted. "It's already so late in the morning, though, Aominecchi! Were you seriously still asleep?"

"Of course."

Kise sighed. "Your house is so boring too. You must have the Col to spare for some nice furniture and decorations! You're living out in the sticks on Floor 35, do you realise what a pain it is to get here?"

"I didn't miss you at all," Daiki muttered under his breath. Louder, he added, "I forgot how much you complain about everything."

"I missed partying with you, Aominecchi," Kise told him, "so I don't even mind that you're being mean to me today, because I get to play with you again!"

Daiki sighed. "As long as we stop to get something to eat, I don't care."

"We can find something at Grandzam. Come _on_, Aominecchi!"

Daiki let Kise tug on his wrist as he finished equipping his items and skills. "Yeah, okay, I'm ready already."

"You should move somewhere more convenient, Aominecchi," Kise complained again as they left his house.

"Too expensive," Daiki grunted.

"I don't want to have to come and fetch you every day!" Kise wailed. "It takes forever and you won't even be ready! I know I'm good, but I can't take this much time out from working on the frontlines you know, Aominecchi!"

"Are you trying to get to a point here, Kise?"

There was a sly smile on Kise's face. "We should room together like before! I know you kind of wanted to rip my head off, but you know, it was so _convenient_, and you can't use the excuse you don't have enough money!"

Daiki frowned. "Living together, Kise? That's probably not very good for your reputation, is it?"

He got a hand waved in his face for the trouble of bringing up this particular train of thought. "Don't be ridiculous, Aominecchi. If you're _really_ concerned, I suppose we could pass it off as you being my bodyguard, since the guild leaders all have one, though most people know I'm not quite _that_ high on our command chain."  
"I certainly wouldn't trust you with any decision making," Daiki commented.

"You're so mean to me, Aominecchi."

Daiki slung an arm around Kise's neck and grinned at him. "You enjoy being teased," he countered. "It's okay, I know you missed me, you don't have to say anything."

Kise shoved him off, pouting, and Daiki couldn't help wondering if the sound of Kise's breathing at night would still be just as soothing as it was before.

"Alright," Daiki decided, smirking at Kise. "I'll live in your house. But only because I can't be bothered figuring out how the fuck to get anywhere in Algade, that place is a fucking maze."

Kise grins and Daiki notices that some time during their exchange, they've arrived at the teleport gate.

"Teleport: Grandzam!" Kise ordered it.

* * *

Kise is easier to live with this time.

He's not entirely sure what the difference is. Kise himself hasn't changed his habits, and he's just as headache-inducing-ly bubbly and energetic in the mornings, but somehow it's not quite as aggravating as it used to be.

(Daiki's starting to think all this time spent alone has fucked with his brain, because he likes being with Kise all the time now. Kise's smiles have reached back into his golden eyes, and playing with Kise on the frontline makes him feel alive again the way he does on a basketball court.)

Neither of them can cook. Kise laments this nightly, but they take turns paying for the NPC meals, and neither of them is willing to devote precious skill points into something useless like cooking when levelling up takes as much work as it does now.

"Asunacchi can cook," Kise confides in him one evening as they're lazing in their beds. Kise's home in Algade only had one small bedroom, but they've managed to squeeze two beds in there somehow. (There isn't much space between them; Daiki could reach over and touch Kise at any point. He never does, but it's nice to know that he can reach over and have solid, tangible proof that Kise is alive and beside him.)

"She cooked for me once, though her skill wasn't as high as it is these days. It was back when the guild was a bit smaller, you know? I miss those days. Even though everyone was really determined, it was nice, feeling close with everyone. The guild feels so big and lonely." Kise turned his head and smiled and Daiki – Daiki thought for a moment his heart was beating a little faster.

"I never joined a guild," Daiki informed Kise.

"You never change, Aominecchi," Kise replied, laughing. "You still don't play very well with others."

_I only need to play well with you_ felt as if it was on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed it and threw his pillow at Kise's face instead.

Kise threw it back and turned to lie sprawled out on his back. "My birthday's next week, Aominecchi," he said, changing their conversation topic. "But I don't know what to ask for."

Daiki sighed. "Then I don't know, save it for when we get home or something."

"That could take forever though, Aominecchi!" Kise complained. "We're on Floor 62, and we've been here for almost a year and a half. It could be another year and a half or longer until we get home."

They fell to silence as Kise finished speaking.

"Ugh, but I want to play basketball," Daiki grumbled. "Another year and a half until I can play basketball again?"

Kise looked as if he wanted to say something, and then seemed to decide against it. "I wonder how good everyone has gotten while we've been gone. It's going to be a bitch to learn all their new tricks." He looked over at Daiki again, and a sly smirk made its way onto his face. "I bet you'll lose fantastically to Kagamicchi in a one on one."

Daiki sat up in outrage. "No way will that idiot beat me!"

"Aominecchi, he already did..."

Still, Daiki couldn't help the thrill of anticipation that tore through him as he thought about how much their old teammates, and Kagami, would have _grown_, how incredible it would be to fight against them.

"Ah, shit," he said, falling back onto the bed. "I don't want to think about it anymore, it just makes me miss basketball too much."

"You're still the same basketball idiot as ever," Kise commented. Daiki looked across – there was a small smile on Kise's face. It wasn't an expression he was familiar with, and it wasn't what Daiki would call _cheerful_, but it wasn't unhappy either, so Daiki put it out of his mind.

They ended up spending Kise's birthday just like they spent most of their days these days, and the same way that they had spent his birthday last year. Daiki almost felt bad, because it didn't seem to be special, but Kise seemed happy, so he put it aside.

Daiki's first Floor Boss fight happened just days after Kise's birthday. Kise was called into Headquarters, and so Daiki reluctantly found himself trailing behind him. He would never, ever, _ever_ admit as much, but he was nervous. This was dangerous. People died in boss fights. Sure, maybe none had died since Floor 56, but that didn't mean the streak wouldn't be broken in this fight.

He wanted to ask Kise not to fight. He wanted to tell Kise to stay home with him. But that would come off really cowardly, and he couldn't bear to let Kise see him that way. Kise had weathered a number of these battles, anyway. Surely, with Daiki by his side, there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

The boss was a warrior type, wielding a large axe. Daiki and Kise had ended up, somehow, in a group, despite Daiki's attitude towards working with anyone other than Kise.

"Shut up, Aominecchi," Kise had said rather sweetly as they'd walked down the corridors towards the boss room.

Despite being in a group of eight, for the most part, Daiki found that people had preferred partners to switch with, though obviously if someone looked as though they might be in trouble, someone would jump in. The strategy for dealing with this boss was largely for sword and shield users to take and deflect the swings of the axe, and the other players to focus on offense. There was something really comfortable about the routine with which the players executed their strategy that settled Daiki's fear that someone stupid would get him or Kise killed, and let him relax into the adrenaline thrum caused by the battle.

It was almost too easy, Daiki wanted to say after the battle was won with no loss of life, but he didn't. He simply followed as the group walked on to activate the portal, and watched as Kise grinned and chatted tiredly with the guildmates he was friendliest with.

* * *

"Come _on_, Aominecchi, I really want to watch Kirito-kun fight the Commander! Didn't you hear about him?"

"Do you think the kid will beat the Commander?" Daiki asked, yawning, as Kise pulled him through the crowd by his wrist anyway.

Kise hummed. "I don't know," he answered finally. "I've seen the Commander use his Unique Skill before in a few of the more difficult Boss fights, but like pretty much everyone else, I've only heard rumours about Kirito-kun's Dual Blades. It's hard to imagine the Commander losing, though."

Daiki had to agree; while not personally acquainted with the Commander, he _had_ seen him in action over the past few months and Floor Boss fights. It was hard to miss him, after all, dressed all in red with his distinctive shield. He was fairly certain he'd seen Kirito in a few Floor Boss fights as well – the Black Swordsman was also a distinctive presence on the battlefield – but he'd never had more than the single black sword in those battles.

Kise threaded them through the crowd and into the seating area. "I heard there's a wager on the battle."

"I don't care."

"I heard Asunacchi was going to take some time off from the guild, but the Commander said he had to win her leave, but if he loses he'll have to join our guild."

"I still don't care, Kise."

Kise shoved Daiki down into a seat. "It's going be a good duel, Aominecchi! Come on!"

"Yeah, probably," he agreed.

Kise watched avidly as the Commander and the Black Swordsman walked out into the centre of the arena, and Daiki felt warm. It was rare to see Kise so happily invested in something here. Being invested in surviving was grim rather than enjoyable.

He looked away, and caught the start of the battle, Kirito attempting the first attack, and being completely repelled by the Commander's shield.

"They're both so strong," Kise commented; there was a tinge of respect to his tone. "But the Commander's defence is insane."

"The Swordsman reacts quickly. I'd almost say he has the instincts."

"But even if he's fast, can he really get through that defence?"

Daiki grinned. "If I can get through Murasakibara's defence, I bet the Swordsman can get through the Commander's."

"_This is not basketball, Aominecchi!_"

"Look, there's an opening! Oh, wait... no." Daiki frowned. "I didn't think the Commander would be that fast. I guess it must have been a feint to catch the Swordsman. Still, for a moment I thought he'd broken the Commander's defence."

Kise hummed thoughtfully. "That was a little anti-climactic though," he complained. "Ah, but this means we got another strong player to add to our ranks! The Divine Dragon Alliance will be _seething_ when they see Kiritocchi in the white of the Knights."

"Weren't you calling him Kirito-kun like five minutes ago?"

Kise elbowed him. Daiki elbowed him back.

"I have to respect him after that battle, Aominecchi!" Kise whined. "Did you even see what I just saw?"

Okay, maybe it was impressive. Still, he didn't have to _say_ so.

"Ah, but poor Asunacchi won't get her leave from the guild," Kise realised as he stood up. "That must suck."

"We have our work cut out for us clearing this floor, Kise, I can't feel all that bad about two strong frontline players having to stay here and help us get out of here faster," Daiki said, voice flat as he stood to follow Kise out of the stadium. "Now come on, how much Col did you drop on the tickets to watch this? We'll need to go earn that back now."

Kise smiled over his shoulder. "It'll be fine. Besides, other than being a little bit small, I think our house is good."

Daiki prodded Kise's ribs. "Come on. You've had your fun for the day. Dungeon time now."

* * *

It was as they walked home through the maze of streets that Algade comprised of three days later that Kise got a message.

"Ah... I've been called into Headquarters," he said to Daiki, apologetic. "I'll meet you at home?"

"Yeah. Try not to take too long, I don't want to wait to eat," Daiki grumbled.

"Aominecchi, you don't have to have dinner with me..." Kise pointed out.

"It's your turn to pay for dinner," he answered, feeling flustered. He wasn't even sure that was _true_ (actually he was fairly certain it was his turn to pay for dinner, and he was also fairly certain Kise knew that), but somehow he felt the need to cover up for the sentiment.

"Well, if it takes too long, feel free to go without me," Kise said. "I'll pay next time."

With that, he turned around and returned to the warp gate, and Daiki trudged moodily back to their house.

(He wasn't sure when it stopped being Kise's and started being theirs; it was just one of those things that he shoved from his mind, like the way he felt lonely for the first time in ages now that Kise was gone, and the way he had stopped checking the friends list every morning and night because he could hear Kise breathing practically right next to him, and how some nights he gave into the desire to touch his hand where it laid palm up and fingers loosely curled, and refused to think about why he wanted to do it and why it made his stomach feel jittery)

He ended up sitting on his bed waiting for Kise, who returned wearing his model smile, which he dropped immediately once in the safety of their home.

"Godfree's dead," he informed Daiki bluntly, collapsing on Daiki's bed. He squawked, looking up from his menu screen where he'd been looking over his inventory for anything worth selling.

"What happened?" Daiki asked quietly, closing the menu. He didn't care, not _really_ – despite having been a member of the Knights of the Blood Oath for just over four months, he wasn't really close with anyone. But he knew Godfree, because he organised a lot of their battle strategies and formations. And he knew that Kise was very friendly with a lot of the frontline fighters in the guild.

"Murdered," Kise mumbled, turning over onto his side to curl up below Daiki's feet. "That creepy guy who used to be Asunacchi's body guard did it as a part of his plan to get revenge on Kiritocchi for being humiliated. Apparently he almost killed them both too, but Kiritocchi killed him. The two of them are taking leave from the guild. I've been asked to handle some of the responsibilities of forward command, since I'm an older member who fights on the frontlines, and I'm well known and recognisable."

Daiki frowned. "That's a lot of firepower we're losing on the frontlines," he mumbled. Then, hesitating for a moment then pushing through the indecision, he asked, "How are you doing with it?"

"I'm scared I'll get people killed," he admitted quietly. "And... I mean, Godfree and I weren't good friends or anything, but he was still... he was still someone I knew. He was kind, and friendly, and I don't think he had a bad bone in his body. He wanted people to get along."

Kise hauled himself up into a sitting position. Daiki felt at a loss for what to do. Kise had that look about him, the one that was a little bit haunted and usually came when he was dwelling too much on their imminent mortality.

He reacted pretty much purely on instinct, reaching over to tug Kise back and over between his knees, then resting his hands awkwardly on Kise's side and shoulder. Okay, so this was a lot weirder than when it was with Satsuki, but it was kind of nice, too. He ignored the way Kise was staring at him like he'd grown a second head and looked away.

"When Satsuki's really worked up about something I..." he started to say, and then stopped, unable to finish the sentence. He lifted one of his hands to rub the back of his neck for a moment, then put it back on Kise's shoulder. "Yeah," he finished, lamely.

Kise closed his eyes and let his head drop against Daiki's shoulder. "Yeah."

* * *

Daiki is with Kise almost two weeks later in the cave where the major frontline guilds are waiting for the boss room scouting party to come back when they've found out about Floor 75's boss, and is therefore there when the news is broken that the doors opened to the boss room again and it was _empty, _and that the players sent inside, a joint venture of all the big frontline guilds, have not teleported either to Collinia, or their respective Headquarters. Someone is sent to the Monument of Life to validate what they all sense in their guts to be true; that they were killed in the boss room, unable to teleport away.

Kise's almost beside himself, and if this wasn't a very public forum, Daiki's pretty sure he'd be pulling Kise into another really awkward hug. They didn't talk about that night, and they didn't talk about the fact they fell asleep that way (and Daiki certainly didn't even think about how comfortable it had felt and how warm he'd felt with Kise beneath his hands, and the way that he wanted that again, wanted to feel the way Kise breathed as he slept as well as hear it).

Daiki wasn't sure what they would say about it anyway.

The guild commanders are all in an uproar. Boss rooms have never been trapped like this before; this makes everything so much more dangerous.

Eventually, when everyone calms down, it's decided that the largest attack force that can be mustered will have to be sent in. Everyone who was on the frontlines at the time remembers Floor 25 and 50, and the difficult battles of those floors. No one, even those who weren't at those battles, believes this one will be any easier.

Kirito and Asuna are called back from their honeymoon for the boss raid. Everyone is given time to prepare themselves before they go to battle.

Daiki is lying on a couch staring at the ceiling in their Headquarters when Kise approaches.

"Aominecchi..."

He looked over. Kise was fiddling with the edge of his white coat, a nervous tic if there ever was one. There's a heavy feeling in the air all over Headquarters; Daiki has almost been expecting this.

"Are you here to say something in case one of us dies in the boss room?" Daiki asked bluntly. Kise chewed at his bottom lip and fiddled with the earring on his left ear. He's not sure when Kise got it done on his avatar here, he realised.

He sat up and stretched, then walked over to where Kise stood, and lifted his hand to rest on Kise's head.

"You're not going to say it," Daiki ordered him. "You're not going to say it because we're going to survive. You promised me, blondie, remember? We're going to play basketball again."

He paused, and let his hand drop from Kise's head to his shoulder, and then curled it around him. Kise's shaking again.

"If you absolutely have to say it," he added, "you'll tell me when we get to Floor 76, okay? But we're gonna make it out, pretty boy. I won't let you die."

Kise nodded into his shoulder, and Daiki guessed that was the best he could do.

* * *

Beeping was the sound that Daiki woke to.

His eyes felt heavy, but somehow he managed to pry them open. The helmet he'd put on that fateful day, just barely over two years ago, was what he saw, and for a moment it felt so _surreal_.

His body felt sluggish and heavy. Just lifting his arm was difficult, and it wasn't worth the trouble when his hand was in his sight and _fuck was that his fucking hand what the fuck_.

He let it drop, and took a few deep breaths. Okay. So he hadn't actually thought about what it meant that his physical body wasn't moving and wasn't eating or drinking. He'd never actually thought about how his body could still be alive when his consciousness wasn't there to take care of it.

His stomach felt empty, but nausea felt as if it was coming in waves.

Daiki wondered if Kise had thought about this.

He eventually managed to haul himself up into a sitting position. He felt like he should call a nurse or something so they could get in contact with his parents and Satsuki, but if _everyone_ was logged out, surely people would know and have started to make their way towards the hospitals?

Somehow, he was sure Satsuki would be here soon. He could help the smile that crept on him at the thought.

Not long after, the door to his room was thrown open. Standing in the doorway was a sweaty girl gasping for breath, pink hair falling messily all over her face.

And then she started crying.

"Don't cry!" Daiki croaked. Satsuki ran over to his bed and buried her head in the blankets near his leg. It took her a moment to gather herself, and finally, she managed to look up at him with something that was probably supposed to resemble an angry or scolding face.

"You are _never_ allowed to scare me like that ever again, do you hear me, Aomine Daiki?" she whispered. Her voice broke on his name. "_Never_."

Daiki reached out to rest a hand on her head. "Yeah, okay. I promise."

"I missed you so much," Satsuki said her voice thick. Her eyes were bright with tears still.

"I missed you too," Daiki admitted quietly.

Satsuki's phone buzzed. Reluctantly, she lifted her head, and Daiki let his hand slip from it back onto the bed. She looked at it and frowned, then sent a rapid response.

"Who's that?"

"Tetsu-kun," she answered. "He was asking if I was here with you and if you were awake yet. I told them they have to come tomorrow. Today you're mine until your family and doctor take you."

Daiki smiled at her. "Come on," he said, shifting over as much as he could. "Come here and tell me what everyone's doing and who won which tournaments. I know you want to."

Satsuki rubbed her eyes and clambered onto the bed to sit beside him. Daiki leaned against her, and wished that he felt he could keep an arm around her shoulder.

It wasn't until after the flurry of doctors' appointments and tearful reunions with his parents and a visit from the rest of the Miracles, that Daiki realised that no one had said anything about Kise.

"How's Kise going?" he asked Satsuki that afternoon. She'd come in with a satchel full of her university things, and had told him she often studied in here.

She froze, and Daiki got a very bad feeling.

"I guess... well, I should have known... I thought..." she mumbled, before biting her lip and taking a deep breath.

"Ki-chan... hasn't woken up yet."

Daiki felt like his stomach was bottoming out of his body. "He _what_?"

Satsuki twisted her fingers together. "From what Se—Akashi-kun has been able to determine, three hundred players from Sword Art Online have yet to wake up. Ki-chan is one of them."

* * *

sorry not sorry for that chapter ending please don't kill me


	5. Chapter 5

Adjusting back to reality is hard.

The most difficult part, Daiki found, was that his body was so _weak_. Two years lying unmoving in bed had left it unrecognisable; the sight of himself, barely skin and bones, barely _alive_, sickened him. He had very little energy, and couldn't eat very much. Being stuck in bed is frustrating, even if he's sleeping half the time. He doesn't get to move too much – the doctors have stressed that it is inadvisable to over-strain his recovering body. Once he gains a bit of weight, and he gains a little more muscle, they'll start him on some proper physical therapy.

Kagami and Tetsu drop by when they can, and it's strange, because they're so much the same as they always have been, and different at the same time. Their faces and bodies have grown to adult fullness and proportions, and they're both at university playing basketball there and it all makes Daiki hopelessly jealous.

Satsuki is there every afternoon, quietly working on whatever work she has to do, and talking to him. Some afternoons he convinces her to abandon her schoolwork and curl up with him in his bed, and they talk in hushed tones about the years they missed together, always playing catch up.

"I confessed to Tetsu-kun in third year," Satsuki whispered during one of these confessional times. "After the last Winter Cup, while we were organising the fundraiser game," she added. "Did we tell you about that yet?"

Daiki nodded. She had explained to him that mainly using Akashi's alarming number of connections, they had organised a fundraiser basketball game, where, somehow, some professional basketball players had played, and the profits from ticket sales all went towards the continuing care of SAO victims. She'd also mentioned that a short Miracles vs Professionals game had been played, which had made Daiki wildly envious of Kagami and his former teammates.

"How did that go down?" Daiki asked.

Satsuki laughed. "Well, he was all Tetsu-kun about it," she said. "Polite and apologetic about not returning my feelings. I was really upset for a while, and it was really hard because it felt like I had no one to talk to, because you were... _there_ and Ki-chan was _there_, and Tetsu-kun had rejected me and Midorin and Kagamin and Muk-kun are really _hopeless_... but then I remembered that Sei-chan had offered to listen whenever, so, I called him."

"So that's how you two got so close," Daiki muttered. He still wasn't sure how he felt about the connection between the two of them. They'd gotten along well enough in junior high, but they had always just been the captain and the manager, more than friends. They'd worked well together, but had no deeper affiliations. Daiki had been sure that he was hallucinating when Satsuki had told him they were now _dating_.

"But you know, I wish Tetsu-kun and Kagamin would get their act together. With Sei-chan and I are together, I really want to see Tetsu-kun be happy, you know?"

Daiki laughed quietly. "Tetsu won't sit around and wait for what he wants forever, Satsuki," he replied. "He goes after the things he wants. They'll get there when it's right. He always does his best to win the game."

She smiled in response. "I suppose so."

Kise is an elephant in the room a lot. It's not that they don't talk about him – Daiki feels like he's almost all he talks about sometimes. He knows Satsuki has figured out there are things that he's not telling her, that sometimes he gives away hints when he talks about things they got up to on different floors and she's starting to piece together that there's a whole bunch of floors of _nothing_, and he hasn't told her about the way they fell asleep together after Godfree was murdered and Kise was given some of the forward command responsibilities, they haven't spoken about the way that Daiki has expressed that the first thing he wants to do when he's allowed to leave the hospital is to visit Kise, and they haven't talked about how Daiki won't cut his hair and how he keeps stealing Satsuki's hair ties to keep it off his face because it annoys him.

They haven't talked about how missing Kise is a constant pressure on his chest begging to be released, and knowing it can't be even if he sees him.

It's just so hard, even just thinking about talking about Kise, remembering that Kise isn't awake, remembering the promises that they made and how capriciously they have been stolen from him. It's an ache for someone who _understands_, who will sit there and look at how much the world has moved and their friends have changed while they, too, changed, but also felt that they stayed so much the same as they were.

It would also be nice to have someone to spend time with when he's stuck in the empty hospital room between appointments and visits and sleeping. He's pretty sure if Kise had been awake that he'd have requested that they be together.

All in all, being landed back in reality has just as many difficulties to overcome as being in the game did. Daiki's still not sure what the plans are for him and all the kids who were trapped in the game, for finishing their education, and he doesn't know if he'll be able to play professional basketball like he'd dreamed, if his body will ever get to the point where it can perform the way it did before. He doesn't know what he wants to do if he can't play basketball, either. The days feel endless and almost monotonous.

It's a relief when he's finally given the okay for physical therapy. He's blunt with the therapist when she asks about whether he has any goals in mind.

"I was the ace of a nationally ranked basketball club," he informed her. "I'm going to play again."

She seemed incredulous, but Satsuki had brought his old laptop in last time she came and there are a few recordings on there of a few of his games, and he showed her the game with Kise from first year, which is simultaneously his favourite and least favourite game.

"Well, I can get you started," she admitted, "but I'm not going to be able to get you all the way."

"That's fine," he told her in response. "I don't need you for that anyway. Just get me to the point where I can train."

He knows Satsuki has been shopping around, knows that this therapist will get him to 'normal' as quickly and healthily as possible, and he knows that she's going to find him the best trainer he can.

He's still surprised when Aida Riko shows up at his hospital room the day he's discharged from the hospital.

"You're not ready for training yet," she said bluntly. "But I'll get you where you want when you are. You're going to know why Seirin won the Winter Cup."

Daiki can't help but feel that that was a _threat_.

* * *

"Will you come with me to visit Kise today?" Daiki asked Satsuki the first morning he was home. He'd called her from their household phone when he'd woken that morning –he was a disgustingly early riser lately, and he was pretty sure it was mostly because he spent so much time sleeping.

"_Okay, Dai-chan,_" she answered. Her voice was light, although she had to know that this was quite serious. Honestly, Daiki wasn't even sure if he wanted her to be there for the first time he laid eyes on Kise's body again, but he wasn't allowed to wander around on his own yet, and he wanted her to be there in case he needed help getting home. It was far less humiliating getting help from Satsuki, who had seen him through pretty much all his worst moments, than it was getting help from anyone else.

"When do you finish class?" he asked her.

"_I finish around three today_," she told him. "_I'll get home around three thirty and then we can go visit Ki-chan_."

"Okay. Thanks."

He ended the call abruptly, and then went and collapsed into the couch. Honestly, with everyone else off at university, he didn't really have anything to _do_ these days, and he knew he really wasn't ready to go and play basketball. His days seemed empty, somehow, since they weren't filled every waking moment with Kise's presence and battle.

"Fuck this," he grumbled. "I'm _bored_."

He didn't have his own phone; his parents had cancelled it, and had yet to organise a new one. So he couldn't annoy anyone by texting them.

He ended up lying on the couch watching TV most of the day, absently flicking through channels. At one point, he'd watched a basketball game on the sports channel, which was cool, but then it ended and it was just terrible daytime TV again.

It was a relief when Satsuki finally arrived.

"I'm so bored," Daiki complained at her. "Save me."

She laughed. "What did you do when you were in the hospital, Dai-chan?" she asked, smiling as they set off towards the train station.

"Slept," he admitted. "When I wasn't in a physical therapy session. But it's weird, you know. My room is all clean and stuff, it's like it's not even mine. I think my parents cleaned the _walls_, Satsuki; there aren't any scuff marks from my basketballs. Which are all flat, by the way. I mean, I could pump them up, but what's the point? My body probably can't handle playing basketball again yet, not if I don't want to fuck it all up."

Satsuki patted his arm. "I'm sure you'll be ready to start training with Aida-san soon," she said cheerfully. "Just don't hurt yourself before you're ready, and you'll be playing again in no time. Kagamin's excited, you know."

Daiki grumbled. "The only way he'd ever beat me one on one is when I'm handicapped anyway, so he can enjoy it while it lasts."

Satsuki didn't laugh, but her smile did take on a decidedly knowing slant. "Sure, Dai-chan," she said.

Shit, he didn't want her to know how excited _that_ made him feel. He shrugged, trying to make it look careless.

The train trip was quiet, and Satsuki leaned against his shoulder, and it made Daiki feel more at ease. On a day like today, confronted with the undeniable truths of how much his life had changed and how much he had to adjust to now, just as he had had to adjust to life back then, he felt strangely unsettled. It didn't help that Kise, who had been a touchstone whether he was in proximity to Daiki or not, was all of a sudden not there anymore.

The hospital staff were all acquainted with Satsuki; Daiki discovered that there was an old list of people who were allowed to be admitted into Kise's room, and the people on it have been okayed for a key card to his room.

"We had a lot of difficulties with fangirls who tried to gain access to Ki-chan's room," Satsuki told him. Daiki wanted to smile at her over it, but his stomach was twisted in knots now that he was finally here at the hospital where Kise is lying.

The trip in the elevator is silent, and Daiki followed Satsuki's lead as she stepped familiarly out of the elevator and turns to the right. It was a little bit of a walk to Kise's room, but finally they arrived and Satsuki took her key card out of her wallet and let them in.

There are fresh flowers on the bedside table – sunflowers – and a little charm next to it. Daiki focused on them, because all of a sudden he felt as if he couldn't breathe.

"Oh, Midorin's been by," Satsuki commented. "That must be Gemini's lucky item for today."

Daiki felt thrown off by how normal this was for Satsuki. But of course it was; this is what she'd been doing every afternoon for two years, after school and after her university classes, coming to sit in a quiet hospital with an unresponsive boy. He swallowed hard, and finally looked at Kise.

There wasn't all that much to see, to be fair. Most of him was underneath the hospital blanket, and his head was mostly covered by the NerveGear helmet. What could be seen of Kise's face was thin, and Daiki half-stumbled towards his bedside.

"Did we walk too much, Dai-chan?" Satsuki asked, looking concerned. "Here, there's a chair, sit down."

He didn't correct her – couldn't correct her, as she fussed and pushed him gently down into the visitor's chair. He leaned his head on the bed, closed his eyes, attempted to block out the sound of the heart monitor's steady beep, and listened to Kise's breath, steady as it had ever been any time they'd shared a room, whether at training camp, or at an Inn or in their home in Algade.

Satsuki pulled Kise's bony hand out from under the blankets and held it gently. The sight of it horrified Daiki, just as his own hand had horrified him when he'd woken. Kise wasn't meant to look like this.

This... was horrible. This was _unbearable_. How had Satsuki done this, day in and day out for the better part of two years?

"Do you want something to drink, Dai-chan?" Satsuki asked, putting Kise's hand gently down on top of the blanket. "I'll go get something."

She hadn't waited for his answer, but that was okay. They both knew that it was simply her excuse to leave, and give him a little bit of time alone with Kise without asking for it. If it wasn't Satsuki, Daiki would probably have asked how she knew, how she always knew, but it _was_ Satsuki, even after all this time; so of course she knew.

Daiki reached out slowly, and curled his fingers under Kise's bony hand. Just like his had been, it was nothing but skin stretched taut over bones. His arm and wrist were skinny too, and his skin wasn't very warm.

He swallowed hard, and lifted Kise's hand gently, his arm deadweight in his hands, and pressed Kise's curled knuckles against his cheek. Why wasn't he awake yet?

Why did it have to be Kise?

He put his hand down, and then pulled the blankets back over his arm before slumping over on the bed, crossing his arms and resting his head on top of them. From this angle, he could sort of see Kise's face; thin, sunken cheeks, and his hair looked like it was probably long under the NerveGear helmet too.

"Come back, Kise," Daiki mumbled. "You have something important to tell me, don't you? You have a promise to keep to me, too. Why are you still sleeping here, idiot?"

Satsuki came back with water for both of them.

"You know," she started, and paused for a moment. "You know that I'm here to listen if you want to talk, right, Dai-chan?"

He nodded, but didn't say anything.

* * *

Daiki got his own key card for Kise's room a few days later, and visited Kise on most mornings. The trips are usually uneventful, and he never stayed very long – Satsuki had picked up her habit of studying in the quiet hospital room, so he was never there after three. But visiting Kise felt like something he needed to do, like seeing Kise re-grounded him.

When Aida finally looked him over and told him that he was ready to start training one afternoon when he passed by her father's gym after visiting Kise, its mid-December, and he's been out of SAO for a bit over a month.

He's begun to get used to the looks Aida gives him when he visits every week, which are appraising rather than ogling, though they're still uncomfortable. He _knows_ that she knows what he looked like before he was trapped, and somehow he feels the comparison all the way down to his bones.

He wishes Kise was here with him.

True to her word, they start training the next day, and Aida is _brutal_, and enormously strict about the amount of time he can spend training. She informs him that if she gets even the faintest idea he's been working on his own, she'll cut their sessions short.

"You're still recovering," she snapped at him one afternoon, when he complained about how her strict regimen didn't allow for him to play any basketball. "I've devised an optimal training schedule that will have you recover properly and as quickly as possible while working towards the end goal. If you're going to throw out my hard work, then I'm going to throw _you_ out."

Less than half the time they work on a basketball court, which is his main gripe. His ball-handling skills are rusty, he's horrified to discover, but she just shrugs and says it'll come back faster than he thinks. She's more worried about getting his body up to speed.

One afternoon, after a particularly nasty session that had him running some truly horrifying suicide laps and agility courses, he accidentally slipped up.

"I wish Kise was here suffering with me," he muttered, and immediately regretted it when he quite literally watched her face soften in sympathy.

"You know," she said, "if you want to talk about anything, that there's a lot of people who really care about you. But if you think it'd be easier to talk to a stranger, you can talk to me too."

Daiki could argue that Aida is not a stranger – she's not – but he knows what she's getting at. She's not really connected in the same sense that everyone else is.

"Thanks," he answered, but didn't elaborate. He didn't _mean_ to let Kise slip from where he's nestled himself in Daiki's brain, sleeping as quietly there as he does in his hospital room.

He knew it was kind of illogical, but he was still annoyed when, after showering and changing, he leaves the gym and found Satsuki waiting, a worried look on her face.

"Hey," he greeted her. He started walking, knowing that she would catch up.

"How was your session today, Dai-chan?"

"Fine. She makes me work," he admitted.

Satsuki smiled, but Daiki knew that Aida had spoken to her before he'd gotten out of the change room. She'd probably messaged her after his slip, even.

He wasn't sure how to talk about Kise, not in the way that they wanted him to. (He wasn't sure if he was ready, if he would ever be ready. How long were the last three hundred players going to sleep for? How long could Kise's body hold out on that hospital bed? Satsuki probably knew the answer to that. She'd probably had a countdown going in the back of her head since the two of them were trapped; only now the countdown has stopped for Daiki, but it's still ticking interminably towards the point at which Kise's body will give out, the point at which Kise's body would fail him for the final time)

_I miss Kise_, he wants to say, but he's choking on the words somewhere between his throat and his mouth, and his lips can't even form the words, and they're the mildest way he can think of expressing the feeling he has when he lies in bed before falling asleep noticeably alone and to the sound of silence, wondering how it's harder to do this time than last time, and the way he feels so strangely and uncomfortably _lonely_ again when Satsuki's not around, the way he did when he and Kise parted in the death game.

"Dai-chan?"

Daiki was ripped from his thoughts, and he looked around, and realised that it must have been at least ten minutes since he'd said anything, and Satsuki must have asked him something.

"Sorry, what?"

She smiled gently. "Ki-chan will wake up," she said. "I'm sure of it."

Daiki wasn't sure how she could be so sure – it was a miracle that he was out already, and he knew it even if she didn't – because he couldn't bring himself to believe it.

* * *

"Hey, Kise, it's kinda sad, me spending Christmas like this with you, right?"

Kise's room had been busy today. Usually, Daiki wouldn't have bothered to stay, especially with it being his first holiday event back in reality, but Satsuki had plans with Akashi, and he wasn't about to fuck with that because Akashi still scared the hell out of him on a few levels, _and_ the little shit had kind of covered his hospitalisation expenses. In addition to that, Daiki had also figured his parents deserved a break from his almost constant presence in the house.

Kise's very pretty sisters and parents had been by, as well as Satsuki and Akashi, and Kagami, Tetsu and Midorima had all come past, though none had stayed too long. The lucky item for Geminis sat on Kise's bedside table. It was a toy frog, and Daiki had the feeling this was Midorima's own one, rather than one bought for Kise.

"But you know, it made me kind of sad, thinking about you being all alone for Christmas," he muttered.

Daiki didn't really _like_ spending too much time in Kise's room. It just made him feel grumpy and lethargic, a lot like that first year of high school. Most of the time when he visited, he stayed no longer than an hour, even though he came most days before or after training with Aida. But today his feet didn't want to take the steps to move away from Kise's sleeping body and the comfortingly constant sound of the heart monitor beeping out Kise's heartbeat and, when he concentrated, the sound of Kise's breathing.

He didn't know when visiting hours would end, but he didn't really care, either. There's not really anyone else that will come to visit Kise now.

"I wonder what it was like, here in this room last Christmas," Daiki said aloud. What he had begun to call his chair was pulled up close to Kise's bed, and his arms were crossed on the bed next to Kise. "If it was just like this, except without me in it. That's pretty sad, Kise. I mean, your room is pretty sad most days anyway, except when Satsuki comes and studies in here I guess. You're so lively, I feel like your room should have more life in it."

Shit, where is this all coming from?

"If this was some kind of story, you'd wake up tonight," he added. "But you're an annoying shit, so you won't, and you won't appreciate the fact I've spent the entire goddamn day in this room with you."

Ah, the lethargy is back again. Daiki wished there was a couch in here he could sleep on. This chair's too small, and he was pretty sure he'd fall off if he attempted to sleep on it.

"I should probably play some basketball for you," Daiki said. "I bet you'd ask me for one on one for Christmas, just like for your birthday. If you'd woken up when you were supposed to, we'd be playing together by now. Aida would be mad at us all the time for doing shit when we're not supervised, but we'd keep doing it anyway, because when have we ever been smart enough to stop when we've been told? If you were smart enough for that, you'd have never fucked up your leg so bad. And you know, I really missed basketball, I just want to play all the time, and I can't, it's so annoying."

Daiki dropped his head onto the bed. "It's so strange, you not being around," he mumbled into the sheets. "You need to wake up soon so I can remember how annoying you are and not miss you anymore."

He closed his eyes. Really, this was probably terrible for his back, but there's no room to sleep on the bed with Kise (and wouldn't that be comforting, feeling as if Kise was somehow protected from whatever it was that kept him in its grip, the way Daiki had felt that he sheltered him from his fear that one night in Algade after the murder of Godfree), and he's not too keen on the idea of sleeping on the floor, even though he's slept in far more uncomfortable places.

He doesn't realise what's happened until he's shaken awake later that evening, and he opened his eyes to Satsuki's sad smile and Akashi's hand on his shoulder.

"Visiting hours have been over for hours, Dai-chan," Satsuki said, voice soft.

"I fell asleep," he answered. "Kise's room makes me lethargic."

Satsuki's gaze flicked up to Akashi, then back down to his face. Daiki sighed, sat up, and stretched.

"You didn't have to come get me," he adds, looking at them. Satsuki's all prettied up, and he suspects that his parents contacted her when he didn't come home, so they dropped their date to find him.

She stroked his hair gently – it's tied back with one of her hair ties he's permanently taken possession of. "You think I don't get it," she said, slowly, "but I do. Of course I had to come get you."

Akashi shifted, almost as if he feels uncomfortable witnessing the intimacy of their friendship, and he let go of Daiki's shoulder.

Daiki wants to drop his head back on Kise's bed, with the way everything feels so overwhelming all at once.

"It's okay if you don't want to say it," Satsuki whispered. "But I know. How can I not know, when I've seen your expression on my own face so many times over the last years, and when I've known you so well for so long? You've never said it in so many words, but I know how deeply you feel the absence of Ki-chan."

_Do you know why_, Daiki wants to ask her, but she'll know the answer to that too, and Daiki doesn't know if he's ready to face the answer to that question, the answer that sits on his chest forebodingly, that he refuses to think about except to sometimes wonder when, exactly, it happened. (Was it all the way back on that day in middle school? Or was it that moment when he watched, shocked, as Kise dropped into Daiki's own basketball stance? When? It didn't _start_ the day that he saved Kise's life, it didn't start the day he pulled Kise against him to try and fight back the haunted look on Kise's face. They were just moments when it was made obvious that he felt something special for and about Kise.)

"Come, Daiki," Akashi ordered, when he doesn't respond. "It's late, and Satsuki should be getting home."

Daiki nodded numbly, and brushed his fingers over the lump he knows is Kise's hand under the blankets as he stood and followed them out the door.

* * *

"I hear they're talking about a school for the SAO survivors. Are you thinking about going?" Satsuki asked one afternoon in early January.

"I've been contacted about it," Daiki admitted. "They're supposed to be doing some kind of thing for high school students, to get them ready for university if they want to go. But everything feels so up in the air at the moment, because I keep wondering about basketball, and if I'll be able to go pro. And I want to finish high school, and there's like, a full year left of study to do for that, but this school won't have a basketball team because it's a temporary school, and I'm too old to play in high school leagues anyway. I was on a basketball scholarship at Touou, right? They'd probably let me finish school but it's not something my parents have really brought up."

Their conversation lulls into silence as Satsuki considers what he's said. "You should go to the SAO school," Satsuki said, finally. "It'll be good for you to be surrounded by people who understand the experience that you all went through, and you'll have a full year for your body to respond to your training. It's a shame you won't be able to play tournaments, because that would be the easiest way to get scouted, but with your reputation we could probably sort something out. It would be easiest if we got you into university, so you could play for a university team and get scouted from there, but I know you weren't too keen on further study."

"I might not have a choice," Daiki pointed out. "If I can't go pro, then I'll probably need to get a degree."

Satsuki hummed. "That's true."

Daiki sighed. "I can't believe they're talking about what to do with us when Kise and the others are still asleep," he mumbled.

"Well, most of you have been out for two months now," Satsuki answered, although she sounded apologetic. "Something needs to be sorted out for those of you who were still in school, especially the youngest ones."

Daiki grumbled, but had to concede the point. It wasn't that he was opposed to the school, or that he didn't understand the necessity for it, it was just, Kise wasn't awake yet. The idea of continuing on with life without Kise beside him was...

_Ah, fuck_.

"I think I'm in love with Kise," came tumbling out of his mouth before he could think about it too much, or stop it from happening.

"I know," Satsuki replied. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." He doesn't. Now that he's said it, it doesn't feel quite as heavy, and all the things he hasn't shared with her even though he thought he wanted to, he doesn't want to share anymore because he wants to guard them jealously. They're his and Kise's, and no one else's.

"Okay." Satsuki lets it go, still smiling, like she's proud of him for admitting it, and he wants to be mad at her, because it wasn't as if he hadn't figured it out, but he can't.

"It sucks," he does tell her, and she laughs.

* * *

It's nine thirty-ish at night on January the twenty second when he gets what is known as 'the call'.

He'd dozed off on the couch, because Aida had upped his training regimen and his body was sore, but thrumming in the good way it did after a hard workout, and his parents had let him be. He was woken by the insistent, annoying buzz of his new phone.

"What?" he asked, answering with a yawn.

"_Dai-chan_," Satsuki says, "_they didn't know how to get in contact, but they said he asked to see you_-"

Daiki sat bolt upright, the soreness and fatigue chased away by the realisation of what, exactly, this phone call _was_.

He was running almost before he realised, his feet carrying him along the well-known path towards the hospital, and he was going to regret this tomorrow, Aida was going to _kill_ him, but it didn't matter because _Kise was awake_, Kise had asked for him and probably one of his parents would have driven him, but whatever, it would be worth all of the little demon woman's anger and painful therapy when she discovered he'd run on top of the new training when he got there.

(How could he not, how was he supposed to wait for a train or expect his parents to understand, when Kise was finally, _finally_ awake again?)

His entire body burned with the effort, but he couldn't bring himself to slow down, and god, he couldn't remember the last time he pushed his limits this far and this hard.

He was like ninety nine percent sure that visiting hours were beyond over, but even as he reached the hospital, there didn't seem to be anyone willing to stop him. One of the nurses – he didn't know her, though he imagined Satsuki might – smiled at him as he walked determinedly past her towards the elevator, and he tried to pretend that he wasn't pathetically gasping for breath.

The time seemed to stretch into infinity as the elevator crawled up the floors towards the room Kise had been sleeping in, and all of a sudden Daiki felt nervous.

It wasn't as if he knew for sure what it was that Kise had wanted to say to him that day. He'd only ever assumed, from the way that Kise had held himself and the context of the potentially life-ending battle in front of them. He didn't even know if Kise might like men; it wasn't as if _he'd_ ever given the idea very much thought.

But he'd always kind of just rolled with his instincts anyway, so thinking about it was almost pointless. And it was Kise, and it just kind of made sense in hindsight; from that moment he'd seen Kise watching him and fallen just a little bit in love with him the way that most people did when Kise turned on the charm, so much so that they had had a name for that moment (and then, the way Kise had never needed, never really tried, to charm him but had managed to do so anyway).

As the elevator arrived on Kise's floor, Daiki ran a hand over his face and sighed, before he walked the familiar path to Kise's door. His hair was starting to slip from the hair tie and into his face, which was annoying, but he didn't bother to re-tie it. It was useless to worry.

Kise's sisters were smiling outside his room. They waved at him as he walked up, and Daiki had a rare self-conscious moment, realising that he was covered in sweat and probably smelled, and his hair was still kind of long because he hadn't gotten it cut yet and Kise's sisters were _really pretty_.

"Hi," he said lamely.

"Aomine-kun, hi," one of them answered. "Our parents are inside with him at the moment, but we're going home soon. You can go in, if you want."

"Ah, I'll wait," Daiki mumbled, reaching to rub the back of his neck. "Satsuki said..."

"Oh, Momoi-chan? She's always been so wonderful, through this whole ordeal," the other sister answered. "She spent most of her time in your room, of course, but she always brought a lovely bouquet of flowers to bring some life to Ryouta's room when she did come to visit him."

Daiki smiled awkwardly, and leaned against the wall next to the door. "That sounds like something she would do."

A few uncomfortable minutes passed, and Daiki buried his hands in his pockets and kicked at the linoleum floor. Kise's sisters were quiet too, though their happiness and relief was easy to see when Daiki took the moments to look at them. It was strange, how similar they were to Kise, and yet how different, too.

Finally, Kise's parents came out of Kise's room, Kise's doctor with them.

"Ah, thank you for coming, Aomine-kun," Kise's mother said. She had the same relieved, happy smile Kise's sisters were wearing. "Ryouta wouldn't settle down until we reassured him that you were coming."

Daiki felt himself flush. "It's not a problem," he replied.

"Don't keep him awake too long," the doctor told him. "You were one of the victims too, from what I've gathered? We're still not sure why the three hundred remained trapped until today, but I'm sure you remember the aftermath of your waking up."

Daiki nodded. "I remember."

"Then, we'll be off, Aomine-kun. Be safe on your way home, okay?" Kise's mother said. Daiki nodded again, and took a deep breath before he pushed away from the wall and stared at Kise's door for a moment before letting himself inside.

Kise was sitting up, although he was nestled back into some pillows, and he'd been looking out the window. Daiki felt like his stomach had decided to start living in his throat, because Kise is so thin, and he could pass as one of his sisters, with all that long blonde hair down his back, and he doesn't look like the Kise that lives in Daiki's memories, doesn't look like the Kise that he lived with in Algade, but it's undeniably him sitting there all the same.

Kise saw his reflection in the window, turned to look at Daiki, and smiled. "Aominecchi. I didn't hear you come in."

His voice was scratchy and rough, and Daiki tried to swallow his stomach back to where it belonged as he stepped towards him.

"Can't hear properly?" he asked.

"Mmm, it's still a little fuzzy," Kise admitted, and Daiki pulled his chair up to Kise's bed, and collapsed into it. "Your hair's long."

"So's yours," Daiki answered. "You look like a girl."

Kise laughed. "At least I have an excuse," he pointed out. "They tell me _you_ were up and about two months ago."

Ahh, Daiki really didn't want to talk about this. It was uncomfortably close to a discussion about feelings.

"You kept me waiting," he said instead.

"Sorry, Aominecchi." They both knew it wasn't Kise's fault, but the fact that he said it anyway... well, Kise had always been the more understanding of the two of them.

Daiki reached out to mess with Kise's hair, but found his hand caught by Kise's bony fingers. He didn't dare pull away, afraid of accidentally hurting him.

"Aominecchi."

It was that tone, just like in those heavy hours before the battle on the 75th floor. Daiki's wrist was caught, just like all those times Kise had pulled him along, even though his hand now was cold and thin.

"Kise, you..." _should be keeping warm_, he wanted to finish, but Kise didn't let him.

"Aominecchi, you're so important to me." Kise didn't look at his face as he spoke, instead dropping his hand and Daiki's wrist to his lap, then enveloping Daiki's hand with both of his. "Ever since that day when that basketball hit my head, you have been an incredibly important person to and for me, and I..."

Daiki's heart was thudding fast and hard, almost painful, in his chest. Kise refused to look him in the face, instead running his creepy, bony fingers along the back and palm of Daiki's hand. Kise took a deep breath, but he couldn't... seem to get the words out, and his face crumbled a little.

"You're supposed to rest," Daiki forced out. "I can't be bothered going home. So make a little room, will you?"

Kise's cheeks flushed pink. "I... might need some help." He looked like it cost him something to admit that.

"Oops." Daiki scratched his cheek. "I forgot. It's hard to move around much, right? Body's all sluggish and heavy, right? That's okay, hang on."

He gently extricated his hand from Kise's and stood. "I should stretch," he muttered. "Aida's gonna murder me tomorrow." Instead of stretching, he flattened out the bed and started shifting the pillows that Kise was resting on.

"Aominecchi?"

"Be quiet, idiot."

Finally, he kicked his shoes off and slid under the blankets, trying to be aware of the tubes and wires Kise was connected to. He got his arm beneath Kise's neck and manoeuvred him onto his side, so Kise was curled against him.

"You're not allowed to scare me like this again," he grumbled. "Do you know how scary it was when Satsuki told me you didn't wake up with the rest of us? Fuck, but you're annoying. You've hit your lifetime limit on near death experiences, do you hear me? I don't think my heart can take another one."

Kise shifted, letting his hand rest on Daiki's chest. "Okay, Aominecchi," he agreed. Daiki tried to pretend he hadn't noticed Kise smiling. Well, that was okay. Maybe neither one of them could say it yet, but when they were like this, it didn't really matter anyway.

"Aominecchi."

Daiki turned his head to look at Kise. "What?"

Kise curled his hand to grip Daiki's shirt, and pushed himself up to kiss him.

"I hope you're not too stupid to figure out what that means," Kise said.

Daiki would have shoved Kise away in embarrassment if he wasn't sure he'd accidentally hurt him in the process. Instead, he felt his cheeks burn, and he looked away even as he pulled Kise a little closer.

"Idiot."

"Mmm, but Aominecchi likes me that way," Kise said as he closed his eyes. "Because he's an idiot too."

Daiki snorted, but a warm feeling soaked through him, originating from where Kise's bony fingers were clutching his shirt right over his heart, and it made his mouth tilt to a smile.

* * *

I'd just like to take a moment to thank everyone who's taken the time to read this gratuitously self-indulgent AU fic, and especially thank those of you who have commented and reviewed.

And also mention that at some point in time I'm going to post a collection of side-pieces/my headcanons for this AU.

Thank you for sticking to the end of this monstrosity! I'm really very proud of this, so it means a lot to me that you did. :)


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